Dead in the Water

There are great creature/alien movies: Everything from Alien to The Thing. And then there's this. But, I like Sci-Fi's movies...they are just the thing when I just want to veg or otherwise occupy my time while doing other things, with something on in the background. Nothing new here except an all-female crew. Basically clueless crew gets into trouble of their own making, an alien/creature attacks, the make bad decisions and turn on each other. Regular cast of characters playing the roles we know so well, weakling, survivalist, martyr. Completely formulaic. On the plus side, there was very minimal CGI; most of it was 'live action'.

Bunch of girls on a ship chasing naughty illegal Chinese fishermen get themselves into a tizzy when the engine claps out.

With no men on board to help they are left to scream and panic. Part Alien part Descent part lots of things.

Not very good. Acting just about passable. Story pretty pathetic. They should have known to take a man along. Bruce Willis would have solved their problems in the first act with his brute strength and intelligence but sadly he was not on board.

Had a couple of good ideas but in the end was not really much of anything. Passable if you are bored on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Will reiterate this once again, as there are people accused of bias all the time and questioned why they watch things in the first place, there is no personal bias against films made on a modest or less budget. Also have a high appreciation for the horror genre, have liked a fair share of creature films and that 'Dead in the Water' had an all female cast was another interest point (that is not uncommon but haven't seen that a lot).

Unfortunately, 'Dead in the Water' was exactly like its very apt title, "dead in the water", very early on, never recovered and actually got worse. It is not irredeemable and not a complete and utter abomination, but it could have made something much more interesting and original with a concept that was far from new but still semi-intriguing, because it fails to do either. All of this is not being said with malice, have never felt or talked that way about any film, regardless of how angry it made me feel, actually did want to like it because it was not as if it didn't have potential. The potential wasn't enormous as such but it was there somewhat.

There are a few good things. It does look reasonably good and atmospheric mostly, in particularly it is a long way from being amateurishly shot and the editing is at least coherent.

Music is ominous enough and does fit, not feeling discordant with the action while never enhancing it as such.

Not much going for 'Dead in the Water' otherwise. Not all of the film looks great, the water is so obviously CGI-rendered and it looks incredibly fake. As do the creature effects, that would have been slightly acceptable 50 plus years ago but when you see how far technology and visuals generally have advanced over-time it is sad that it looks like they were made as an afterthought with no effect. Just as bad is that the enemy is not interesting or menacing at all, more unintentionally if anything else. The complete lack of suspense and thrills also severely hurt the film, replaced instead by interminably sluggish pacing, unnecessary padding, no attempt to do anything fresh or interesting with the numerous cliches and the increasingly over-the-top ridiculousness. Found myself not caring at all, having long lost interest, for any explanations offered, even then they felt very vague and pretty silly.

'Dead in the Water's' script flows very awkwardly and has very little life, some of the lines are difficult to take seriously and one has to refrain from laughing at times. The characters have no development to them and their stereotypical and over-the-top behaviours and personalities grate fast, there is nothing to make one engage with them when they are so bored and irritated by them from the very start. The acting is a painful mix of overdone and robotic.

Summing up, not completely awful but fell dead in the water too early and never recovered. 3/10

While this film wasn't a bad little time waster..it was lacking the buoyancy to keep it afloat...I wanted to like it more as it started to show strength by the 2nd act...but couldn't hold it above water.. It was good to see an all female cast. Decent acting for the most part considering the C list factor.

But in reality when you try to storyboard a mixture of Alien..The Thing..into an X-File-ish type of made for TV movie on a boat at sea the results will be as murky as the waters you're trying to navigate.

As our 5 female protagonists are out to sea attempting to capture illegal fishing operators they come across a man in a life raft from somewhere and assumed to be dead. They bring him aboard only to realize he isn't.

After a confrontation he is killed and they realize he has been bitten or sucked on by something. An autopsy reveals a living entity inside him which has now escaped and looking for hosts. Well...look no further!!.

At this point you could insert any one of the xenomorph scenes from Alien or the Thing into the remainder of the film..with the same results. Call it a "professional pilfering" The flow of the film was good..film stock adequate. It had good moments of suspense and the CGI was used sparingly to good effect and complemented the makeup when required.

As predictable as it is Dead in the Water is still a decent watch at a 5 fishes out of 10..but you're in this liferaft alone...

This had a fair amount of atmosphere for the first hour and was well crafted with the budget. Reviews are very skewed and unfair these days with people rating this a 1 which means it is the worst movie you have ever seen...really?

No to be fair this is at least a 5/10 as I always try and base my reviews on the acting and budget as well as all the other things that make up a movie and to be fair the acting was not that bad and the atmosphere, model ship and wave effects were pretty convincing apart from when they were actually on the ship and it was obvious someone was spraying with a hose lol but that is something one should be used to with low budget horror films and unlike most Scifi channel productions this one comes out on top of the usual dross.

The only part where it was let down was with the creature itself although i did like the use of THE STRAIN wispy tendril effects used on many other movies like THE SAND and other horrors as it does have a rather sinister and scary vibe going on. It fails mostly on the lack of tension towards the last half of the film and like most low budgeters these days it seems to run out of steam mid way to the end.

All in all a decent nights viewing and much better than most of the nonsense I have watched lately so gets a fair slightly above average 5.5/10 from me!