Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.0

Beneath Blu-ray Movie Review

Contempt?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 21, 2014

Here’s the thing about Jaws: probably very few audience members have ever rooted for the shark. And yet in Beneath, a low grade Jaws wannabe, my hunch is within minutes virtually anyone watching this largely lamentable enterprise is going to cheer each and every time one of the mostly despicable characters lost in a small rowboat ventures into chilly lake waters and gets swallowed up by a mutant catfish (yes, a catfish, not to be confused with Catfish). The fact that it takes virtually half of this movie’s running time to get to the first death only prolongs the misery and ups the desire from any rational viewer that whatever is lurking underneath the flimsy confines of the rowboat had better kick into high gear soon. Beneath begins with an outright homage to Jaws (something that director-editor Larry Fessenden mentions he wanted to get out of the way right off the bat), with the camera gazing up at a swimmer treading water from beneath the waves, obviously implying that something is watching her. It turns out that the image is simply part of a wet dream (sorry) on the part of Johnny (Daniel Zovatto), a sweet kid who has an unrequited crush on Kitty (Bonnie Dennison), the girl he fantasized about in his dream and part of a gaggle of high school kids who are now traveling to a hidden, isolated lake for a day of festivities. Can anything other than carnage ensue?

Had Beneath had even a glimmer of humor in its dark little soul, viewers could have been treated to a campy but enjoyable modern day update of Alfred Hitchcock’s venerable Lifeboat. And truth be told, Fessenden shows a bit of Hitch’s ingenuity in capturing an increasingly desperate bunch of survivors in a small, cramped (and eventually sinking) space. But unlike the literate (even literary) screenplay by Jo Swerling (adapted from a John Steinbeck story) that graced the 1944 classic, Beneath flounders with a sometimes downright laughable script by Tony Daniel and Brian D. Smith.

It turns out that Kitty isn’t only haunting Johnny’s dreams. She’s supposedly dating BMOC and typical jock Matt (Chris Conroy), though there are hints (and ultimately more than merely hints) of a burgeoning romance involving Matt’s younger, brainier, brother Simon (Jonny Orsini), as well as an actually kind of interesting hint regarding the only other female in the group, Deb (Mackenzie Rosman). There’s also a tagalong nerd named Zeke (Griffin Newman), a film geek who attaches a camera to his wrist and proceeds to tape the day’s festivities (Beneath occasionally goes the “found footage” route, ping ponging back and forth between Zeke’s footage and the actual narrative of the film).

There are none too subtle hints dropped that Black Lake is not exactly a safe place to vacation and/or celebrate, none less subtle than a crusty old guy named Mr. Parks (Mark Margolis), a friend of Johnny’s family who shows up as the kids frolic at the lake’s shore and warns Johnny that he shouldn’t venture out into the water with that kind of kid. Johnny seems to have an intuitive understanding of what Mr. Parks is talking about, but since the idea is just to row across the lake to the other side where the partying will commence, Johnny thinks they’ll be all right. Can anything other than carnage ensue?

Of course this being a dunderheaded horror film featuring dunderheaded characters, once the teens are in the middle of the lake, several of them strip to their skivvies and jump into the water. Even here, the film doesn’t finally pay off on an already interminable build up, stalling for several more minutes before the first victim gets snacked on by the improbable predator. In what could have been an interesting development under less hackneyed circumstances, this first fishy appetizer actually survives for a while, though a precariously (and bizarrely ignored) blood dripping arm only gives the catfish a trail to follow.

It’s here that Beneath really devolves into completely ludicrous territory. First of all, the kids repeatedly defy logic. After all, it’s not like they’re in the middle of the ocean—they’re in a relatively confined lake and even after the expected loss of their oars take place, they make precious little progress to getting back to land. Instead they sit there in the middle of the lake arguing with each other, with a series of revelations about various interrelationships supposedly giving the proceedings some psychological heft, which at least may provide some unintended humor in this almost relentlessly humorless film.

It isn’t really much of a spoiler to mention that the body count in Beneath reaches near Hamlet levels. The sad thing is that it takes about 90 minutes to make that happen. This is one prehistoric catfish who deserves his own Superfund money for helping to clean up a pretty gargantuan cinematic mess.

Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Beneath is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This digitally shot feature boasts an exceptionally sharp picture, though it often seems a bit too bright, with slightly blooming lighter gradients on display at times. Fessenden and his DP Gordon Arkenberg actually do a commendable job of shooting the film almost entirely on water, and this high definition presentation offers some nice depth of field and at times excellent fine detail in items as various as the almost comically rubbery fins of the catfish or the variety of gruesome wounds with which some characters are afflicted. Colors are nicely saturated and accurate looking and no compression artifacts were noticed in preparation for this review.

Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Beneath's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is nicely rendered, with some good underwater effects nicely detailing the claustrophobic sounds of something moving through the lake grass. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented and Will Bates' effective score also resonates nicely and is well splayed through the surround channels.

Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:39)


• A Look Behind Beneath: Making the "Fish Movie" (1:00:00) is in some ways a lot more interesting than the actual film itself, with some good stuff on the fabrication of the catfish as well as a look at how they did some of the water sequences.


• Outtakes (1080p; 14:40)


• Poster/Premiere (1080p; 2:36). This is a first (at least to my memory), namely a featurette dedicated to the printing of the poster, intercut with brief snippets of the premiere.


• What the Zeke? (1080p; 18:33) is a supposedly comic piece featuring the film geek of Beneath.


• What's In Black Lake? (1080p; 11:42) is some putative "found footage" dealing with the mystery of Black Lake.


• Audio Commentary with Director Larry Fessenden and Sound Designer Graham Reznick. This is a fairly interesting piece, though occasionally filled with pauses. Fessenden talks about some of his techniques in capturing the action and Reznick offers some decent anecdotes about both the filming (he did all of the supplementary footage found in the bonus features) as well as the sound mix.

Beneath Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fessenden has done some decent lo-fi horror outings before, but most of those were from his own screenplays. The writing on Beneath is pretty lackluster, and the film makes a huge mistake in repeatedly showing us the catfish, a patently fake looking rubber puppet that will provoke laughs more than terror. This film should swim with the fishes.