Beneath the Surface

This isn't a shark movie or a horror, it's more of a whodunit. To be fair the acting isn't bad but I found the whole thing quite boring, and there are definitely better ways to spend your time.

Right, well I very, very rarely - as in actually almost never - read reviews of a movie before sitting down to watch a movie. But I really wish I had done so before sitting down to watch the 2022 movie "Beneath the Surface" from writer Paul W. Franklin.

I was lured into watching "Beneath the Surface" because of the movie's cover/poster with the shark, the bloodied water, a burning wreckage and a distraught woman in the water. Talk about false advertisement, because this had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the actual contents of the movie. Well, sure there was a shark in the movie and a woman in the water, but that was about it. And the movie didn't have the thrill and excitement in it at all which was displayed in the cover/poster.

Nay, this was definitely not a shark movie. Instead, I was sitting down to watch a murder mystery, and not a particularly good one at that. The pacing of the movie was rather slow, and the storyline itself was, well truth be told, bland and sort of bordering on being pointless. So no, you're not in for a great movie experience if you sit down to watch "Beneath the Surface" from directors Scott Jeffrey and Rebecca Matthews.

Now, I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress in "Beneath the Surface", and that was actually one of the better things about this ordeal of a movie. And while the actors and actresses had very little to work with in terms of script and properly written characters, then the acting performances in the movie was actually fairly okay.

I managed to suffer through all of "Beneath the Surface", but I wasn't particularly entertained, much less enjoying the storyline. So I can honestly advice you to not waste your time, money or effort on this movie, because it simply isn't worth it.

My rating of "Beneath the Surface" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

The story is a mysterious one. It is told in present day with a flashback to 3 months earlier when an incident occurred. If you've ever been drugged and thrown into shark infested waters you'll definitely relate to this movie. If this scene existed then the bit where Jaws was on the psychiatrists couch telling the tale of the nasty fishermen trying to catch him, it would bring a tear to your eye. Best actor goes to the VW beetle car which was stunning character with big shiny wheels. The movie is watchable. It's nothing to do with a typical sharks in the water eating people other than the two people the shark did actually eat. You can tell from the cover that there was a shark though so that's not spoiling it. I think the shark as a framing device could have been any such event in which two family members were killed in a devious way. I doubt the movie will appeal to many people who looked at the cover like I did and though yay I like shark attack movies like some people like zombie movies. I mean if you've seen one zombie movie you've really seen them all. They're the stupidest genre of movie ever and oh so boring. Some people might not like shark attack movies and this is falsely representing itself as such a movie when it clearly isn't on. For what it is I think it's a pretty good low budget film that lets the story unfold in time. You are lead along a path till the final conclusion.

Poor acting, poor direction, only two production sets if you count a swimming pool with the lights turned off as one.

The lead spent most of the film crying and not very convincingly either.

Beneath the Surface is a very low budget drama dressed up with a minimal shark theme to make it more marketable. Once you get over the disappointment, it's not a terrible movie, but it's not the least bit original aside from the bait and switch scam to convince you to put the time into watching it. It's basically a not-very-clever murder mystery. If you're looking for the next Bait or even the next Sharknado...keep looking. This ain't it.