Beneath Still Waters (2005)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fantastic!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The concept for this is total greatness, and pretty much original (it's based on a novel that I'll be looking for in used book stores). Forty years ago a town in Spain was abandoned so that a dam could be built to create a lake. Evil things are happening under the water as the 40th anniversary of the dam's construction approaches. There is evidence that the dam itself is unsafe, but the mayor insists the festivities must go on (I'll be generous and call this a tribute to JAWS and not copying).Good idea. Nice photography on locations in Spain.Limp direction. Uninspired writing. And, worst of all, terrible actors. For some reason it was decided that actors whose native language was Spanish could deliver dialog in English. Oh, no, they couldn't.The story goes from one predictable crisis to another. An warlock returns to the town to take control, only to be sort of thwarted by the granddaughter of the town's former mayor.Meanwhile, down in the town, the celebration is turning into an orgy.The warlock is vanquished. The granddaughter is saved and it looks like things will be all right. Then a little boy the granddaughter was babysitting gets a crazy look and tells her he hates her as strange lights shine on his face, thus setting up a sequel......if anyone should ever want to make a sequel to this. If, however, Michael Bay should ever decide to spend several million bucks remaking this through Platinum Dune's I'll be there for the 7 PM show opening weekend. It's a good story. But telling it takes talent on both sides of the camera, something very much lacking here.

The story behind this film is sound: A town is submerged to keep a fiendish demon from taking over the world. Two kids unwittingly release this evil & 40 years later it's ready to rampage over the earth. Unfortunately, the story is thrown off kilter by awful acting and characters you just can't care about.You have the mother/reporter who looks like she's only a couple of years older than her daughter & whose overt indifference to her daughter makes it impossible to care what happens to this character.The character of the daughter is not quite so irksome but ruined by awful acting on the part of actress Charlotte Salt.Mordecai Salas, the demon-type character, is wonderfully creepy but feels slightly like a ripoff of the Reverend Kane character from the Poltergeist trilogy.The creature/makeup effects are excellent - the non-supernatural effects are dreadful. The green screen technology is obvious, painfully so during the diving scenes and the divers appear as large as the roof of a house. Forced perspective can work fine--just look at Lord of the Rings, but it's very sloppy in this film.Watch the trailer and that should suffice.

Easily a movie with no redeemable qualities to it. The acting was bad if they were even trying, the story was carbon copy: people stumble into evil and must stop it, and the action and horror was FEW and far between. I honestly could not finish what is with out a doubt the worst movie I have ever seen, I made it to 1 hour 16 minutes and I could not stand any more of it. The previews of it mad me so excited, but the actually movie was a let down. Save your self the time and don't watch it. Everything could have been fine if it chose a side. Horror or Suspense: pick one. The few moment of terror were cool, but they happened only a few times. There was a TON of story build up and character development, perfect for a suspense movie.

"Beneath still waters" is'nt comparable to some of the masterpieces in which Yuzna has been involved as a director ("Society") or producer ("Re-animator"). It has some serious flaw too, like the quite predictable script (with some really terrible line in the dialogues). But it's worth watching, if only for the spirit of the operation: low-budget euro-horror made with love and care. Plus very good locations and suggestive underwater shots, a right amount of gore, a perfect villain and a final orgy that cannot fail to remind "Society"'s finale. The entertainment is not missing.I think it's a kind of cinema that should be supported.