Underwater and Sonic the Hedgehog reviews


‘Underwater’ and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ feel like movies out of time. The first is a beat for beat ‘Alien’ rip-off in which a small team of blue collar workers in the employ of a near-future mega corporation try to escape a claustrophobic environment as a hive of mostly unseen creatures preys on them from the shadows; the second is a family friendly action/comedy vehicle for a 90’s video game mascot featuring Jim Carrey as an exuberant villain who dances and gurns his way through a series of dated, by-the-numbers jokes. It feels genuinely bizarre that these films made it to UK screens in the year 2020 but somehow they got here, and I can’t say either of them makes me particularly nostalgic.

That both films got released in the early year dumping ground (January/February are traditionally bad months for movies) speaks to their troubled productions. Underwater was shot back in 2017 before getting lost in the shuffle of Disney’s Fox acquisition, while Sonic got a digital overhaul after the internet reacted with horror to his freakish design in the first trailer. Dispiritingly though none of the hard work put into polishing these films has saved them from the crushing unoriginality of their scripts, which would have seemed archaic ten years ago, let alone now.  

Doing her best to bring some spark to the murky depths of the aquatic thriller is Kristen Stewart, sporting a shaved and dyed head that is so obviously Ellen Ripley it hurts. Stewart has a powerful nervous energy and real sense of presence, sporting an iconic yet skimpy outfit that suits the films B-movie roots, and while her characters emotional journey is not all that compelling it is at least identifiable, her face and mannerisms hinting nicely at a backstory the script does a poor job of articulating. The rest of the cast fills their assigned roles adequately, but it’s baffling how little curiosity the movie has in making them any more than the archetypes we’ve seen countless times before. The whole film is so rote and unadventurous that even the well assembled scary sequences have a feeling of tired predictability to them. The black guy dies first bit, the tough old man sacrifices himself bit, the annoying comedy relief guy gets splattered bit, e.c.t. You could set your watch to it.

Sonic is equally anachronistic, seemingly having been written by a computer algorithm that was fed a bunch of 90’s family comedy scripts and told to average them out into one bland 90 minute ‘Howard the Duck’ copy. It’s one of the most obvious examples of design by committee in recent memory, with every joke falling flat and every attempt at sentimentality falling flatter. Ben Schwartz as the speedy blue hog and Carrey as his nemesis Dr Robotnik (or Eggman sometimes) both bring a large helping of radical 90’s ‘tude to their parts, but there’s so little else to grab onto I found the most interesting aspect of the film was just how lacking in personality the whole thing was.

The crazy thing is neither of these movies is really that bad, not bad enough to be interesting anyway. They both hit the right notes at the right spots and there are certainly worse things playing at this time of year, but both feel destined to be forgotten about faster than a certain sassy hedgehog, lost like fake tears in the rain.                     

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