Beneath

BENEATH:
Graduating from high school should be an exciting moment for all students. It's a time to celebrate and a group of friends decide that they will take their celebrations out to the remote waters of Black Lake. They know that this is their last hoorah together as young friends before each of them go their seperate ways. Just as their fun begins it comes to a hellish end as they get stranded out in the middle of the lake with no oars for their boat and a creature in the water that is tormenting them. This creature is out for blood, their blood, and with no way to get the boat moving these friends will have to put their friendships to the ultimate test of survival against a underwater predator.

Story:
In the first few minutes of the opening of Beneath I was quite impressed with how it was shot and edited. Beneath is a new Chiller movie that I had expected to be like most made for television horror/thriller movies but this opening with the music, the cuts, and the lighting and cinematography of it, I thought I was watching a movie that was shot with a large budget. It even continued with a decent look as the whole cast of characters are introduced, being the typical of the girl all the guys want, her jock boyfriend, the brother to the jock who lives in his shadow, the girl that's spunky, a nerd/geek, and the bad boy. Though once the acting and the story kicks in about the monster fish the expectations I had for it being a low budget horror movie came into play.
Beneath is an ok movie, it's not great, but it's nothing that unexpected. The characters do stupid things that wouldn't be done in real life, such as why would you stand up in a boat when there's some gigantic fish slamming into it or how about instead of yelling at your friends that's 40 feet away to swim back to the boat you actually row the boat to them, and other such instances. It's one of those unbelievable movies with a creature that's out to get the kids while they try to survive and of course the fish starts killing them.

EFFECTS:
While the fish does look all sorts of ugly and scary (if I were in the water), the total look of the effects are actually pretty good. Not great where they do look real but when the monster fish does make it's appearances it didn't look like some computer graphic overlaid on what was shot. There's some edges that can be seen and I was able to tell when there was a CGI effect vs. make up but it's not that bad.

ACTING:
Well, I can't say much on the acting even though I've seen some of the actors in other shows and movies before. I've seen worse actors for sure, but it felt like they where trying to hard to make their characters natural. As they debated over what to do next when dealing with the monster fish there are moments that it seemed rehearsed instead of fluid. Still, they did make me laugh while watching this so I guess they don't do that bad a performance with their roles.

SCARY OR NOT:
Not really the most frightening movies but I think that all depends on who I ask. I know someone who has a fear of fish so this movie would freak him out pretty bad. Me, someone that's seen a whole lot of movies about sea monsters and other monsters, Beneath was more amusing then it was scary. Sure the fish is really ugly and if I where in that boat while it was trying to get me I would be freaking out. However, while watching this movie I never got a slight chill or thought of not wanting to get in a boat. There where some close moments where I thought that could have been scary, especially at the start when I was being made to think something was going to come out of the water but the moment wasn't all that. When the scenes that had the tension of will it eat them or not was playing out the music was pushing it too much to make it more than it was. I found Beneath more amusing and funny then I did scary but I still liked it. I had fun watching it, it actually does what most of the other movies of this genre don't do by being a serious movie instead of some outrageous joke of a movie, and considering this is the first Chiller Films it was pretty impressive.