Beneath

The oversized antagonist of this run of the mill creature feature isn't a bad specimen and definitely looks like something out of the River Monsters alumni, not too far beyond realistic proportions. But that's about all I can praise in this otherwise irritating labour as six high school seniors try to stay afloat a sinking row boat as they're stalked by the voracious lake monster whilst tensions amongst the group threaten their survival.

Most of the characters are clichés (the nerd, the jock, the outsider) and some are plainly irritating, not to mention uneven as the plot meanders from one fatality to the next. It doesn't take long for this lemon to lose its zest, the brittle relationships deteriorating into ridiculous scenarios that accelerate the attrition rate beyond I'm sure even the appetite of the assailant. Aside from the abysmal acting and puerile dialogue, the key weakness in the plot is the fact that the riverbank is clearly visible in almost every shot, yet despite their obvious proximity to shore, these directionless debutantes never seem to get any closer to it. Had they been depicted further from land in a vast lake, the situation would've been more believable.

Unlike the typical monster movie, there's a rather morbid conclusion to this aimless outing, though it doesn't necessarily redeem the previous 80-minutes which even by B-movie standards is pretty mediocre.

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.

Gathering together for one last trip following high school graduation, a group of friends' trip to a small nearby lake forces them to come face-to-face with the lake's monstrous fish creature living there and try to find a way to get out alive.

This one here had just a never-ending series of problems against it that there's not a whole lot of good points for it. The biggest issue with the film is that the film thinks these kinds of callous, vile humans are worthy of being the center-stage for the actions in here, yet none of them are ever worthy of doing anything more than being cannon fodder for the creature as other, smarter characters fought it off. Relying on bullying, cheating, blackmail and deciding that others where more worthy of living and dumping their friends overboard to die with the creature in the lake with them is perhaps the biggest death-knell to each of these characters, especially since all the while there's more than enough tactics on hand to actually fight it off with a gallant effort without resorting to dumping your friends in with the creature that even thinking of resorting to that tactic is really hard to forgive. Of course, the fact that there's one who knows the truth about it but decides against telling the others so that he can win the heart of the group's resident slut doesn't do much to favor this either, and the fact that this one tends to focus solely on the group sitting in the canoe arguing with each other tends to make for wholly uneventful programming with nothing interesting happening. That said, the gore isn't half-bad for the mangled bodies really look like they've been munched on and the creature does have some realistic looks to it since it's kept to a more reasonable size without being too gigantic to live there undetected, and frankly some of the sequences in the later half with the rapidly- drowning boat do get somewhat suspenseful. Overall, though, there's not too much to like here.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Went into this with sort of high expectations. Love a good water monster film and don't mind them low budget. I saw this trailer a while back on You Tube and thought it looked good. Basic premise - characters all with annoying character traits and not that enjoyable to watch end up on a lake with a medium sized fish puppet. Maybe my expectations were too high but the movie doesn't deliver on the trailer.

The creature looked awful and probably the most fake I have seen besides most the creatures on SYFY. They show too many close up, medium and long shots of real bad fish model which clearly looks fake. I appreciate, what looked to be, practical effects over CGI but in this case it didn't help the film. Some of the better scenes with the fish is when it is submerged in the water or a shadow in the water. Its huge eyes look fake as and should have been darker to hide that fake-ness.

The story is unremarkable and the characters, as written, are awful. I feel the actors did their job and no criticisms there - though none shine through. The director, I feel is sloppy as there is no build up for tension in his scenes, he rushes moments that should have levity (most death scenes besides the first girls) and the cinematography is amateurish. The director should have been in control of these aspects. The aspects of having friends making decisions about who to use as fish bait is as stupid as it sounds and comes across like voting for Big Brother. The teen love triangle and angst did leave some room for the actors to emote but again the director I feel didn't push or get the best out of them. The editing and the music was god awful and ruined some aspects of the suspense in scenes being too loud/bombastic when a softer more ambient soundtrack would have been better.

With all that said I WOULD advocate for the director to be financed and to continue developing and the film was not a complete waste. It does sit well with SYFY type of films and as stated my expectations may have been too high has it was a awesome trailer.

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.