Saturday, January 17, 2015

Beneath (2013)

Johnny and his friends go to the lake for a weekend party in celebration of their graduation from high school.  It's also the last time all of them will probably get together like this before most of them go off to college. Geeky Zeke is going to be a filmmaker so he always has his camera going.  Luckily, this isn't a found footage movie.

Arriving at the lake, they get the rowboat ready to launch, when an old man approaches. He's a friend of Johnny's grandfather and wonders if Johnny has permission to be there. When Johnny tells him they're going to row across the lake to party, the old man warns that he should know better. Johnny assures him they're only going to row across and won't go into the water.  But the old man still says it's a really bad idea.

Shortly after this exchange, Johnny tries to give one of the girls a necklace with a large tooth on it, stating it will protect her. She turns him down since she's dating one of the other guys, and thinks the necklace is weird.  No one shall ask why Johnny would invite his friends to a lake that appears to be super dangerous even to row on, or that someone need protection to be near.

Half way to their destination on the other side of the lake, the group stops to drink and go swimming, a fine combination indeed. Johnny tells them not to, but doesn't protest too much, and let's face it,  other teens really aren't going to listen to the one kid who's saying "don't do that". So half the group dives into the water and swim away from the rowboat.  It doesn't take long for something to appear in the water and the group to find out they're in big trouble.  The large creature leaves them stranded in a leaking boat without oars, and wondering how they're going to survive.  This doesn't bode well since stress brings out peoples true nature.

The tense situation reveals the characters to be of different levels of unlikeable.  But I liked this movie.  It's an average flick, but I was entertained by it. Thankfully the kid who filmed everything wasn't the source of the video, although once in awhile you'd see the film from his perspective.

The creature is done by an effects team, rather than CGI, and has a nasty looking long toothed mouth.  I definitely prefer real creature creations rather than computer generated ones.  Just keep in mind that the creature is not as big as it appears on the cover, where it appears to be large enough to swallow the row boat whole.

No comments: