Well, this movie was certainly unique.
When I sat down to watch the 2021 horror mystery "The Deep House" from writers Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury I hadn't even heard about the movie. I had just briefly skimmed through the synopsis and figured from the cover that it could potentially be a movie worthwhile watching. So of course I opted to watch "The Deep House".
I have to admit flat out that I really enjoyed the concept of "The Deep House". The whole thing with a submerged and genuinely creepy house being explored with limited light sources and limited air supply was something that had an interesting appeal to it. And there were definitely some great moments to be experienced throughout the course of the movie. While this out of the ordinary approach to a horror movie was interesting, the actual storyline itself was sort of mundane, if you objectively take a step back and look at it.
And while "The Deep House" was watchable, this was hardly a horror mystery that warrants more than just a single viewing. Yeah, the movie's storyline just didn't have enough aspects and layers, nor contents to support more than just that one and only viewing. So that was something that weighed against the movie.
The acting performances in "The Deep House" were somewhat inadequate, because the two main performers were essentially wearing diving masks for about 95% of the movie, so you lost a lot of facial expressions and mimicry in the dialogue. And being submerged and swimming around certainly also had some limitations upon bodily movement and body language. Again, a shame, because it worked against the overall feel of the movie.
For a horror movie then "The Deep House" just didn't really cut it. Aside from the underwater theme, then "The Deep House" didn't bring anything new or overly thrilling to the horror genre.
Once you get past the submerged creepy house factor of the movie, then you are left with a rather mediocre and mundane horror experience. And once you take out that watery doom factor, you just have a haunted storyline that is similar to many other horror movies.
The camera work in "The Deep House" should also be addressed, as it had that shoddy and wobbly found footage crap style of camera operation to it. I don't enjoy that, since it feels amateurish and low budget. When I sit down to watch a movie, I want to watch proper cinematography, and not something I could do myself with my DV camera.
My rating of "The Deep House" lands on a bland five out of ten stars. I would have rated it a six, but given the fact that so much was lost in terms of acting and mimicry because of the masks and the restrictions of being underwater for almost the entire movie, then I have to let the final rating sink to the bottom as a bland five stars.
