Undertow

This is one strange movie, because it has two great names writing and directing it, Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark) and Eric Red (The Hitcher). It's almost as if some one said: how can we make the leanest, most effective thriller? This is a movie with literally only three actors (3), no extras and the carpenters and assistant carpenters outnumber them more than 2 to 1. As well, this movie, even though it is supposedly located somewhere in "The Carolinas", is shot on location in Latvia (maybe that's why they only flew over 3 actors). This shack could have been anywhere, though, they never needed to leave Hollywood. The major problem with this movie is that the theme has been done to death (hapless traveller drives through the country side, a car breaking down and is scooped up by the locals - where have we seen that before? Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Deliverance, Children Of The Corn...). Anyway, the actors do what they can and there are some suspenseful moments, but they're not sustained until the end of the movie. Cliches abound.

A man's (Lou Diamond Phillips) car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and he finds a cabin deep in the woods. Unwittingly Phillips walks into a volatile situation with a psychotic nut-job (Charles Dance) and his bewildered and frightened young wife (Mia Sara). Soon the typical situations take place as Phillips seems to be in a struggle to survive and of course help Sara escape her mad husband. And naturally Phillips and Sara begin to develop deep romantic feelings for one another. Painful killer of a movie that feels like it was just thrown together with minimal resources and seemingly no planning. Phillips, who is one of those somewhat talented performers who always seems to find himself in terrible cinematic vehicles, looks tired and bored throughout. Unfortunately, he is not as tired and bored as the audience is sure to be. Turkey (0 stars out of 5).

Jack Ketchum (Lou Diamond Phillips) loses control and crashes his car in the deep woods during a driving rainstorm. He is brought to a cabin with the Yates. Lyle Yates (Charles Dance) is a gun-totting paranoid mountain man. His woman Willie (Mia Sara) is demure and painfully quiet. A hurricane is coming to wash out everything but Lyle refuses to evacuate. Then everything gets confused like Lyle.

I watch this to see Mia Sara and also noticed the Kathryn Bigelow writing credit. It holds a bit of promise at the start as a disturbing three person play. However the movie falls apart along with everything else during the storm. LDP has always had this manufactured intensity to me. He tries to act tough rather than simply be tough especially during this time in his career. I rather have Ketchum be weaker and more of a city dweller. Lyle's craziness is too random. The romance is too abrupt and melodramatic. A simple psychological thriller turns messy and confused.

As a premise, this backwoods version of the Dead Calm storyline had promise.

However, director Eric Red's inability to render a convincing hurricane leads to a deluge of continuity and lighting errors.

Ultimately, the viewer is more spellbound by the bizarre weather effects than the intended storyline. Intermittent spates of ham-fisted over-direction are similarly distracting.

Charles Dance, doing an 'inbred backwoods hardass' schtick, does his best to save the movie. But ultimately, Undertow squeals like a pig ... and has more ham to boot.

I watched this film, because I knew there were only three actors in it. That seemed very special to me. The story also seemed quite interesting to me. Not that the story is original, but you can make very good movies out of stories like that. But I was disappointed when I saw it. The direction was not that good and the acting of Lou Diamond Philips was not so good and sometimes a bit irritating. Luckily there are Charles Dance and Mia Sara, that do quite well. The film is quite exciting, but when it nears the end it deteriorates. If the budget would have been bigger, they could have done the cinematography much better and then this would be a much better film. The end could also have been done a little better. A missed opportunity.