Submerged (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Rosa Salazar, Talulah Riley, Jonathan Bennett
Directed by Steven C. Miller
Taking something that had a great premise and delivering it in a way that looks like something that was put together by a group of film students that were held back numerous times is a sad state of affairs, and in the case of Steven C. Miller’s wet dishrag Submerged, this clump merely sinks to the bottom of the sea with no hope of rescue.
Hired to protect the daughter (Riley) of a very wealthy businessman (Tim Daly), an ex-soldier (Bennett) does his due diligence to safeguard her life at all costs. It turns out that a mysterious someone has a sizable hatred for her father and will stop at nothing to ruin their lives at any turn, so a devious ploy is concocted to kidnap her for ransom.
We then pick up the film during an attempted limo run-off into a canal by the baddies, and it’s up to Bennett’s character to save the day and the woman he’s sworn to protect. With all looks and feels, you’d think that this would be a riveting, thrill-laden flick that will make you hold your breath at each scene, but that wasn’t the case. The focus simply forgets the harrowing situation that our main characters have been placed in, instead centering on their bitching and moaning about WHO it was that put them in this perilous predicament.
Now I can’t speak from experience, but I’m fairly sure that if I was in a situation that relied on me keeping my cool, that plan would completely be ignored and I’d be reduced to a babbling, screaming head case… I’m running the risk of drowning here, for Pete’s sake!!
So while the wait continues for some white-knuckled action (in any sense), we’re inundated with a series of inane flashbacks, hokey dialogue, and a reveal of the main bad guy that, for lack of a better term, could be waved off with a yawn and a fart… it’s that lame. By the time the conclusion was finally reached, I was so disinterested in what I was watching that I’d suddenly become transfixed on finding out which tiny bulb had blown out on my Christmas tree.
Any pluses, you ask? Well, Bennett’s performance was steady, and the look of the sunken limo was a nice touch, but there were far too many rocks in the pockets of this one to raise it from the depths of less than mediocrity. My advice for potential viewers? Have the Coast Guard’s number on speed dial because it will take a herculean effort to prevent this from residing at the bottom of the lake. Skip it.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
