What Lurks Beneath Review

Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival Coverage

What Lurks Beneath review.

The Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival kicked off on August 18. The centerpiece of opening night was the world premiere of What Lurks Beneath. The director, a producer and some of the cast was on hand for a Q&A.

Festival movie coverage will not contain spoilers.

What Lurks Beneath

Directed by Jamie Bailey

Written by Marcus Raul

Starring Simon Phillips, Anne-Carolyne Binette, Ryan Giesen, Blake Canning, Michael Swatton, Nick Biskupek, Sienna Star and Dela Reilly

What Lurks Beneath Review

What Lurks Beneath took its first bow in the center screen of the Amherst Theatre.  The screen to the right was finishing off the day’s run of Greta Gerwig’s cultural phenomenon Barbie (before yielding time to a booming Metallica concert event).  To the left was Christopher Nolan’s latest critical and commercial success, Oppenheimer.  It was hard not to think about the origins of the two directors whose work flanked the world premiere of Jamie Bailey’s What Lurks Beneath. 

Gerwig and Nolan each saw debut directorial efforts on incredibly modest budgets.  Gerwig co-wrote and co-directed the mumblecore film Nights and Weekends in 1998.  Nolan wrote and directed Following in 1998.  While neither’s box office performance would point to the juggernauts they’d later helm…they worked within the means available to them and showed considerable talent as storytellers and filmmakers.  Their follow up efforts (Lady Bird and Memento, respectively) had much bigger budgets and put them firmly on the map.

What Lurks Beneath isn’t Bailey’s narrative feature film debut.  That honor belongs to This Was America.    It isn’t his second narrative feature film either.  That would be Deinfluencer.  Long time readers will recall that Deinfluencer is the lowest rated film we’ve covered in the site’s nearly one year history.  What Lurks Beneath is the follow-up to that film. 

Many of the troubles that doomed Deinfluencer (in our view) have been rectified in What Lurks Beneath.  One or two issues remain.  They’re more of philosophical problems than anything else…so we’ll discuss them in a bit.  Because I’m happy to report…there is a lot to like about What Lurks Beneath. 

Let’s begin with an issue that the previous film didn’t have.  Jamie Bailey shoots fantastic looking pictures.  The Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival’s Facebook account lauded What Lurks Beneath’s production values as “Hollywod level”.  They weren’t exaggerating.  What Bailey and crew put on screen with limited budget and even more limited time is astounding.  Bailey serves as the cinematographer on his films.  It gives his productions a cheat code.  He can do, with an affordable camera and some LED lights, what Hollywood pays a fortune for. 

This movie, like Deinfluencer, is a one setting thriller.  Whereas the previous movie’s story was hindered by this…What Lurks Beneath squeezed every drop out of its.  Shot on a real submarine over six days…the production quality here is remarkable.  Bailiey makes every room on the sub feel unique and shoots with such a good eye for spacing that he makes each shot count.  Six days?  Countless movies don’t look this good after six weeks.

The story is leaps and bounds better than Deinfluencer…with a couple of caveats.  It wisely combines multiple unknown threats to provide strong momentum.  We follow the crew of a US submarine near a strategic Russian target on the verge of World War III.  With a Russian submarine in the vicinity, two British officers on board keeping information to themselves and a growing uncertainty about what’s happening in the world above…there is no shortage of compelling threats.  And that’s before they find a naked stowaway inside of a torpedo tube. 

While the script could be tighter…there are several times where the individual threats progress in concert to provide intrigue and thrills.  There is a bit too much exposition at times.  More than once characters are forced to stand around watching a commander give orders on a laptop.  There’s no interesting way to show that…and the scenes tend to go too long to be dynamic.  The same can be said for a subplot involving relationship drama.  Narratively important…but overly scripted and a momentum killer. 

It also tends to get a bit preachy at times.  This was one of Deinfluencer’s biggest missteps.  Its revenge story involves long sermons about the evils of social media.  What Lurks Beneath hammers a theme that men are bad a little too harshly.  The way that it’s used works better here…in service of the manipulation of lower ranking female crew who have been ordered around by men their entire careers.  There’s truth to the stances both films take…but they’re presented with the subtlety of a tack hammer hitting you on the back of the head.  Both put the takes in the hands of an antagonist…which should lessen their impact.  You’ll just hear it too many times to not roll your eyes by the end.

The cast does a fine job as well.  They’d be helped by having a tighter edit…but there are quality performances across the board.  As the crew is whittled down from multiple threats…the main characters emerge and allow their actors room to create something deeper.  Bailey shoots most of the picture with a wide-angle lens which makes the space appear bigger on screen than it was.  It looks gorgeous…but I did wonder how the story would play if we could better see the confined space of the sub.  As the movie’s twists and turns unfold…and you wonder who you can trust…a claustrophobic feel may have elevated the performances.  When it feels like the walls are closing in…it should feel like the walls are closing in.

The biggest issue that What Lurks Beneath has, and what it shares with Deinfluencer, is in defying its budgetary limitations.  Deinfluencer might have worked had its protagonist been able to do increasingly bigger and riskier things to get likes.  What Lurks Beneath isn’t hurt as much by it…but Bailey is still attempting to tell stories that are bigger than possible.  Shooting any movie in six days is incredible.  Especially ones that have this much going for them.  Having six days and choosing to make a World War III thriller with fantasy/sci-fi/horror elements and multiple internal and external threats…well…it’s insane. 

That’s why I want to be clear that what Bailey and company have pulled off is amazing.  But my mind drifts back to those Gerwig and Nolan films.  Think of what Bailey’s camera could put on screen with a story whose scope fit the production’s budget.  A modest story whose visual design would blow the independent scene away.  Like his camera to the setting…Bailey is creating with a wide-angle mind.  It looks amazing…but it feels bigger, and emptier, than it really is.

Scare Value

What Lurks Beneath is a tale of two movies. On one hand, what Jamie Bailey and company accomplished on a production level in just six days is utterly astonishing. On the other, the story exceeds what can be with time and budget. It’s the same flaw that Bailey’s last film suffered from with one major exception. The ability to film on a real submarine justifies this film’s trapped location in a way that Deinfluencer never did. The sub (and film) looks great. The cast delivers despite some overly written scenes. While it would work better stripped down as a suspense thriller featuring unknown threats from inside and out…limiting scope doesn’t appear to be what interests Bailey.

There’s a small independent movie out there that could benefit from his technical prowess and eye for the frame. There’s also a big budget movie out there that would afford him the time to deliver something truly gorgeous. With two Deinfluencer follow-ups on the way…it appears we’ll continue to get something in between.

If you enjoyed this review of What Lurks Beneath, check out another festival review: The Once and Future Smash or check out all of our festival reviews.