Beneath

This filmmaker needs to get someone with writing talent to write the scripts for his films. The biggest weakness of this movie is the pathetic script itself. You can forgive the low budget special effects, because it is in fact a low budget film. But the poorly written script makes it impossible to even care about the characters. I found myself disliking every character. There wasn't a single character in the movie that I felt was worth saving, so when death approached, I was thinking, oh please, just get it over with. These teens, who are supposed to be good friends, barely react when the first one of them dies. And it never gets past that. Their lack of real terror or emotion means that the audience lacks terror and emotion. It's not cheesy enough to be a cult favorite where it's so bad it's good. This movie just leaves you shaking your head. I didn't give it a 1, because I gave credit for some decent cinematography.

kind of the opposite of the other movie I watched today, I liked this one a lot less than I expected. Its gotten mixed reviews mostly on the good side Id say. Unfortunately it does not deserve the praise. What I did respect about the movie was the way the creature looked. It looked like they mostly used practical effects mixed with a little bit of cgi. This in my opinion was a great move on part of the directors. Using practical effects is almost a must for me. There has been a flood of cgi filled creature features and most of the time as soon as the crappy digitally animated creature shows up it pulls me right out of the movie. The creature in this movie looked great, Unfortunately the movie has nothing else going for it, The whole movie takes place around a group of teenagers stranded on a small boat. They make incredibly bad and unbelievable decisions that just make you mad and just over half way through I couldn't wait for this movie to end. It would have been nice to see them do something special with this cool creature and when it finds its first victim I thought things were looking up but they definitely went down from there.

There's no word to describe this movie because it was awful from beginning to end. I usually check on IMDb to see if a movie is worth watching but I checked on the wrong movie (there are two movies called Beneath on IMDb).

At first I thought it would be a good movie to see, I didn't expect any masterpiece but from the very first moment I saw that ancient fish I realized this was gonna be a waste of time, I needed to watch the end of the movie though just to warrant my first impression, but the bad acting, the poor effects and the lack of budget made me write my very first comment on IMDb just to prevent you from watching this movie, plus the storyline was unclear, I didn't even know why they decided to use the rowboat, knowing (one of them) it would be very likely to be attacked by the fish or that one of the boys decides to take a swim.

Do yourself a favor and skip this movie, it's a waste of time.

A gaggle of teenagers who've just graduated high school go on a rural excursion together before they all head their separate ways. They end up on a boat, on a lake, and at least one of their number, Johnny (Daniel Zovatto), seems to know the score. He's heard "legends" regarding the place. As it turns out, this dumb bunch ends up stranded on the boat - which develops leaks - and franticly trying to make it to shore when a goofy monster fish shows up and, every so often, gobbles up one of them.

It's a shame, really. You expect more from writer / director / editor Larry Fessenden ("Habit", "Wendigo") than this kind of cheese ball entertainment. It seems as if he's trying to rise it above most of the efforts in this genre by ruminating on the idea of the depths to which people will sink when it comes to saving their own worthless lives. How much does friendship and family count for in such a situation?

Negating whatever honest intentions Fessenden may have had is the fact that this is one truly despicable bunch of jerks. This is the kind of movie where you root for the monster, by default, to eat everybody because there's not one human character on hand that's tolerable. Zeke (Griffin Newman) is one of the worst because he's a walking cliché: the kind of film geek / aspiring filmmaker who stubbornly insists on filming everything, the kind of guy who drives this viewer right up the wall.

The acting is pretty bad from most everybody concerned, which doesn't help matters. The young cast is amateurish, with just one old pro present: veteran character actor Mark Margolis ("Pi", 'Breaking Bad'), who has just two scenes.

The design for the monster fish is, as was said, rather goofy, but the visual effects are better than one might expect; the fish actually feels like a physical presence in the movie. And there is a smattering of amusing gore throughout.

This isn't one that this viewer would really recommend, unless you have a high tolerance for bad writing and bad acting.

Four out of 10.

Bad, not in a good way.

If you're going to make a low budget shark/croc/piranha knock off you need talent. No talent? You need good actors. No talent and no good actors available? You need really inventive kills. None of the above = weekend hobby film making. Dumb, illogical, boring boring boring. And, why did they always paddle towards the furthest shore???