BELOW Expectations
Yesterday, after me and my friend
Pot came home from
Greenhills (where I bought my new Hard Drive and NO ANIME or GAMES), we plopped into the Sanctum to chill. As I was backing up all my data and files, he looked over my DVD library for stuff to watch. He eventually settled on
Below, which was supposedly a very scary ghost movie set in a submarine during World War II. I hadn't watched the film yet, even though I had bought the DVD at least two months ago. Heh. That's why I like having guests in the Sanctum... they get me to watch and play stuff I usually don't have the initiative to. Weird, eh?
Anyway, in between watching my CD burner scorch away, we watched Below. Almost immediately Pot (who is something of a War movie buff) pointed out tons of inconsistencies in the production; like well-lit, wide corridors, push-button controls and a modern-looking console on what was supposed to be a World War II submarine. And a definite absence of any feeling of the crampness and claustrophobic atmosphere in such a setting. That pretty much killed the film for him, but we kept on watching it.
The film is also guilty of the horror/suspense film cop-out strategy of using shock tactics to jolt and scare- you know the type; establish a feeling of dread, then let it subside, then while your audience is inhaling again something HAPPENS or someone JUMPS OUT or APPEARS. This made us start a couple of times, but eventually it became so predictable we actually could tell when a "scare" was coming.
As for the story itself, when we finally found out what the hell was going on, it underwhelmed us. Below is strictly TV movie material. As for the cast, I can't remember any of them; except that the one female looked kinda like
Saffron Burrows and had an english accent, which I find quite sexy. And Pot pointed out one of the guys was from
Felicity. Whatever. From the reviews I had read, Below was supposed to be a cool, scary and atmospheric thriller and ghost story. Apart from some creepy moments at the start and some chilling but funny touches, this is a below par scary movie. Anyway, the saddest part is that after we turned off the DVD player, we saw that we had just missed seeing the
MTV Spring Break Special. We gave up an hour or so of gorgeous bikini babes for a bad horror movie. Now THAT is scary. Sigh.