BELOW (Mild Spoilers)

Dir. David Twohy USA 2002

"What if, when we took on that Kraut ship, we didn't sink 'em? What if... they sunk us?"

I can unequivocally say that Below is the best haunted submarine movie I've ever seen. Which is a nice thing to be able to say.

Obligatory plot recap: The film is set aboard the U.S.S. Tiger Shark, a submarine patrolling the North Atlantic in the summer of 1943. Having successfully destroyed a German ship, the Tiger Shark answers a distress call from a downed British Merchant Marine vessel. They rescue three survivors: a British navigational officer, an injured German POW and a British nurse. Friction develops among the crew regarding the presence of both an enemy soldier and a woman (the old navy superstition about having a woman on a boat rears its ugly head; and they wonder why everyone thinks they're gay). The tensions increases to paranoia, and eventually violence, as inexplicable accidents and occurrences begin to plague the submarine. The crew eventually realize that the other-worldly threat they face may be connected to a terrible act committed by one of their own. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!

So, if you're anything like me, you barely remember this movie, which was released to little fanfare, mixed reviews and almost no box-office business in October of 2002. It popped up under the horror recommendations on my Netflix queue and two things caught my eye. The first was that it was the film David Twohy made between Pitch Black, one of my favorite sci-fi/action/horror flicks of all time and its sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick (the less said about that, the better). The second was that it was co-written by Darren Aranofsky, the auetuer director behind Pi, Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler. His films are always interesting, in a cripplingly bleak kind of way, and a haunted submarine movie seemed a little off the beaten path for him, so I decided it was worth checking out.

Ultimately, I didn't seen any of Aranofsky's influence on this film. He was credited with two other writers, and I suspect his direct contribution to the script was minimal. This did remind me of Pitch Black in several respects. The entire idea of a small group of characters trapped in a dire situation, only to have an unexpected horror element make the situation even more dire, is pretty much the same set-up as Pitch Black and something Twohy seems comfortable with. He also makes good use of the cramped interior of the submarine and establishes the dimesions of the ship early on in a shot reminiscent of the begining of Serenity where a character walks through the entire vessel to spread a message as the camera follows them.

Unfortunately, the film is not without its problems. Historical authenticity is often difficult to pull off in genre films and/or films with a small budget. There's nothing glaringly anachronistic happening here, but something about the way the sailors interacted with each other just seemed a little to contemporary to me. Zach Galifinakis as one of the crew members didn't help. I can't really picture that guy existing in the 1940's, despite his navy-issue giant beard.

The biggest issue I had with the film was the fact that it ended up failing as a horror movie, when it would have made a perfectly serviceable psychological thriller. All in all, the movie wasn't that scary. The horror elements relied very much on 'characters slowly looking at something only to have it be nothing, then turn around and have someone be behind them'-type scares, which I always find kind of annoying. Many curtains were slowly reached for and pulled back, many mirrors stared into for too long (although I will admit, the scene of a character noticing that his reflection is delayed in a mirror was pretty creepy). In the end, the supernatural element of the film ended up taking a back seat to the tension and paranoia that existed between the characters, so much so that I found myself wondering whether or not it needed to be in the film at all. The FX were sparse enough that they weren't silly and the few sequences that directly involved the ghost(s) were effective enough, but I don't believe that there was any reason for the film to explicitly state that it was a ghost, when the ambiguity of the characters perspectives would have been sufficient. The quote I picked for the top of the review comes from a sly scene where the rank and file crew begin to suspect that something is terribly wrong on the ship and attempt to suss out its cause. The Twilight Zone idea of having been shot down by the Germans without knowing it could have easily been the final twist in a lesser version of this movie, but it illustrates (to me at least) the clear fact that the film has included an entire element of the plot that isn't really necessary. Ghosts are far less interesting than human paranoia and fear.

It's a testament to the effectiveness of the performances in the film that the ghosts weren't needed. Stand outs include (given my fondness for classy British women) Olivia Williams as the nurse who takes it upon herself to uncover the mystery plaguing the ship. Seeing her in this was a nice surprise for me after having watched Dollhouse get canceled a few months earlier. I was slightly embarrassed, after racking my brain for the entire film, to realize that the male lead was Elle's boyfriend from the Legally Blonde. He was alright. Fun supporting characters include Jason Flemying (who doesn't rock the American accent too well) and the aforementioned Zach Galifinakis.

All in all, Below is....a pretty decent haunted submarine movie. Check it out if it sounds like something you'd be into.