Beneath Still Waters

This movie is terrible. I don't know what the director was doing and I'm sure he felt the same way. The acting was terrible. There were characters with American, Spanish, British and what sounded like dutch, accents. I guess realism wasn't the number 1 priority. The acting was terrible, at best. That is more than I can say for the 'special effects' which comprised mainly of slow-motion(how 80s) and painfully clumsy green screen work. The monsters were about as scary as something out of an Ed Wood movie. I've seen toddlers make scarier monsters from play-dough. The plot was neither going here nor there. It was clichéd and methodical, yet still managed to be quite unfathomnnable. It seems the director was writing the script spontaneously and whatever popped into his head was hastily squeezed in. This movie is an insult to anyone who may have the misfortune to endure 92 minutes of unprofessional directing, poor special effects, poorer acting and an altogether mediocre performance and story line. I am still very surprised that this even made it to a theater and even more surprised I didn't walk out of it halfway. I guess it's like a gruesome car-crash where you cannot divert your eyes away even though you should. But in this case I'd rather be in the car crash and be spared the movie.

As a longtime Yuzna fan, I was absolutely delighted when I heard of this project. I happened upon the novel on which this film is based many years ago, and it's always stuck with me - there are some genuinely creepy ideas (and moments) in there. Great director, good source material... what could possibly go wrong?

A great many things, apparently.

The acting and dialogue are stilted, the atmosphere (which should just create itself, given the setting) simply isn't there, and the dreadful scene-chewing performance of Patrick Gordon as the villain of the piece deflates any sense of dread one may have had. Even the one decent monster effect is wasted in a brief and poorly-sequenced shot. As much as it pains me to say, Mr. Yuzna seems to have hit a bit of a slump. Do yourself a favour - skip this one and watch "Beyond Re-Animator" instead.

There after it gets worse for every minute.

The actors are most likely better in an ordinary high schools drama class, than the ones they cast for this movie. The children was alright though, but the adult actors.......

The actions of the characters are so stupid that you think a 5 year old have scripted it.

Well you can say it started so well and ended very bad. I hope this instructor never makes a movie again.

In many really bad horror movies you at least ends up getting some good laughs. Even this failed here.

After years producing and directing in the US, Brian Yuzna eventually left the States to set up shop in Spain; judging by the awful Beneath Still Waters, he's either been overdoing the Sangria or not taking enough siestas. Whatever the reason, it's hard to believe that this mess was directed by the same guy that gave us the twisted classic Society and the delightfully gory Return Of The Living Dead 3.

Yuzna's watery waste-of-time starts in the abandoned Spanish town of Marienbad, with two boys freeing Mordecai Salas, the leader of a Satanic cult, just as the area is about to be flooded by a new dam. Forty years later, as the locals prepare to mark the anniversary of Desbaria, the town that was built to replace Marienbad, a series of strange deaths occur which suggest that Salas, trapped deep beneath the water for so long, is about to surface. In order to save Desbaria, a photojournalist named Dan (Michael McKell), a TV news reporter, Teresa (Raquel Meroño), and her pretty daughter Clara (Charlotte Salt) must do battle with the supernatural forces that are intent on destroying the town.

Featuring a European cast who, with the exception of a couple of Brits, struggle with the English dialogue, Beneath Still Waters is a badly scripted, poorly acted and dreary piece of nonsense that is enlivened occasionally by some fairly decent gore and loads of nudity. Yuzna's direction is uninspired, there is far too much reliance on cheap digital effects during the many underwater scenes, and the story often makes little or no sense (eg. why does Salas wait for forty years under the lake before emerging?).

To be fair, Yuzna does manage one or two inspired moments—the best being the town's celebration, which turns into a debauched orgy—but with so much mundane drivel between the few high points, Beneath Still Waters deserves to sink without a trace.

I'd heard nothing but bad things about this film; but decided to track it down anyway simply because it has so much promise. For a start it was directed by Brian Yuzna' part of the creative genius behind Re-Animator and director of horror masterpieces Society and Return of the Living Dead 3; and secondly, the plot; which is based on a book by Matthew Costello, sounded like a great base for a horror movie. I figured that with these two elements in place, things couldn't possibly be as bad as I'd heard. Well...to say things went wrong would be an understatement. The plot focuses on a Spanish village named Marienbad; a place where the locals are gradually succumbing to a Satanic cult lead by a man named Mordecai Salas. Someone or other has hatched a plan involving building a dam to flood the town and it's inhabitants; but the plan fails when a couple of no good kids end up freeing the cult leader before the town is engulfed in water. Fast forward forty years and the village of Desbaria stands in its place; though the cult leader is waiting for his revenge.

The film gets off to a really good start as we watch a couple of kids traverse across a flooded town and into a brilliantly realised Satanic church where they are greeted by a group of bewitched locals. But once this is over and we move into the present day, things start to go downhill. The main problem with the film is that it's a mess. There are a handful of good ideas but they haven't been put together coherently which takes most of the credibility away from the film. The film also feels very cheap; the poor acting doesn't help in this respect, and neither does the turgid script which is littered with trite lines of dialogue. The film does feature some nice locations, which is nice, but that's really the only good thing I have to say about it. Anyone who has seen more than a few Brian Yuzna films will know that the director likes to let things descend into chaos so he can show a wave of graphic images; and that happens here, but it's not as good as it was in the likes of Society and really just caps off a very disappointing effort. I wouldn't hesitate to name this as Yuzna's worst alongside Faust: Love of the Damned, and only hardcore fans need apply.