Beneath Still Waters

There after it gets worse for every minute.

The actors are most likely better in an ordinary high schools drama class, than the ones they cast for this movie. The children was alright though, but the adult actors.......

The actions of the characters are so stupid that you think a 5 year old have scripted it.

Well you can say it started so well and ended very bad. I hope this instructor never makes a movie again.

In many really bad horror movies you at least ends up getting some good laughs. Even this failed here.

Brian Yuzna is a director who almost never has disappointed me. He's inventive and he knows what fans wants. The only ones that I haven't liked is "The Progeny" and "Tarzan: The Epic Adventures TV Movie". But after moving to Spain to join Filmax developed label Fantastic Factory things have begun to go downwards. I really liked "Beyond Re-Animator" but his "Rottweiler" was just terrible. I was very, very disappointed with that movie. And now we have "Beneath Still Waters".

The story is about a water filled ghost town with a dark past. Strange things are happening and people are showing up dead. A female reporter and a newly arrived photo journalist are teaming up to investigate the surroundings. Sounds pretty good to me.

First I must say I liked it a whole lot better than "Rottweiller" but it still left me very unsatisfied. Things aren't developed very good, the characters are not that interesting, the gore is there but it leaves much more to be desired, there's too little monster action, we've seen the ending hundreds of time before etc.

I'm not saying I didn't like it, I was just expecting more. Some good diving footage, one cool monster, some tension and atmosphere, a cool beginning, Diana Peñalver ("Braindead") in a small part. But overall a rather tame effort by Yuzna. You can do better.

Brian Yuzna was already responsible for some really crazy and unusual horror projects in the past; some of them refreshing and original ("Society", "The Dentist") and other ones unspeakably terrible ("Rottweiler"), but "Beneath Still Waters" is undoubtedly the most discouraging effort he was ever involved in. This film certainly doesn't look as if it were directed by someone with over twenty years of experience in the genre, because the wholesome simply feels amateurish and unfinished. How can a concept holding so much horrific potential result in such a boring and incoherent mess? How can one film feature so many exquisite filming locations, nauseating make-up effects and thoroughly depraved themes and still turn out a complete failure? I love macabre tales handling about sunken villages and the dark secrets that drowned with them. There are way too few films like this in the horror genre and of the two I encountered during the past year, one is obscure as hell and remains unreleased on DVD to this date (the modest Swiss production entitled "Marmorera") and the other one - this particular film - is a missed opportunity. There are a lot of things going on in "Beneath Still Waters", but only very little of them make sense and it seems as if Yuzna doesn't want you to care about any of the characters and the grim ordeals they are facing. The events take place in a remote Spanish village, days before the great 40th anniversary celebration of the dam that prevented the area from flooding and the subsequent foundation of a brand new town called Desbaria. Few people know, however, the dam initially served to deliberately drown the entire town of Marienbad, because all the inhabitants were gradually joining the satanic cult led by Mordecai Salas. Two ruthless boys accidentally saved Salas from a watery death right before the town sunk entirely, and he has been waiting forty years now to seek revenge on the descendants of the previous mayor. So … what we have here is, without exaggerating, one of the most promising horror premises of the past two decades AND you can also add several dynamite sub themes like nudity, child-kill, underwater zombies and even a totally gratuitous orgy complete with nuns and chickens! Can someone please tell me where exactly this idea went wrong? Yuzna leaps from one subject to another without paying attention to continuity and for some reason he also inserts numerous tedious elements. All the main characters are bland and of course the really wooden acting performances of the ensemble cast don't help. Most of the players appear to be dead long before their characters drown in the lake or become "consumed" by the living mucus & seaweed. Such a dam(n) shame, because the Spanish filming locations are genuinely ominous! For the proper grim use of picturesque Spanish villages, please check out "Dagon" and "The Nun", which are both films Yuzna produced but not directed himself.

After years producing and directing in the US, Brian Yuzna eventually left the States to set up shop in Spain; judging by the awful Beneath Still Waters, he's either been overdoing the Sangria or not taking enough siestas. Whatever the reason, it's hard to believe that this mess was directed by the same guy that gave us the twisted classic Society and the delightfully gory Return Of The Living Dead 3.

Yuzna's watery waste-of-time starts in the abandoned Spanish town of Marienbad, with two boys freeing Mordecai Salas, the leader of a Satanic cult, just as the area is about to be flooded by a new dam. Forty years later, as the locals prepare to mark the anniversary of Desbaria, the town that was built to replace Marienbad, a series of strange deaths occur which suggest that Salas, trapped deep beneath the water for so long, is about to surface. In order to save Desbaria, a photojournalist named Dan (Michael McKell), a TV news reporter, Teresa (Raquel Meroño), and her pretty daughter Clara (Charlotte Salt) must do battle with the supernatural forces that are intent on destroying the town.

Featuring a European cast who, with the exception of a couple of Brits, struggle with the English dialogue, Beneath Still Waters is a badly scripted, poorly acted and dreary piece of nonsense that is enlivened occasionally by some fairly decent gore and loads of nudity. Yuzna's direction is uninspired, there is far too much reliance on cheap digital effects during the many underwater scenes, and the story often makes little or no sense (eg. why does Salas wait for forty years under the lake before emerging?).

To be fair, Yuzna does manage one or two inspired moments—the best being the town's celebration, which turns into a debauched orgy—but with so much mundane drivel between the few high points, Beneath Still Waters deserves to sink without a trace.

In 1965, in Northern Spain, a dam will be built to bring progress to the location of Desbaria and the town of Marienbad is near to be completely flooded. Two boys, Teo and Luis, cross the security boundary to play in the evacuated town and Teo listen to voices in the abandoned church. They find a group of strange people chained in the watered basement, Teo releases their leader Mordecai Salas (Patrick Gordon) and is killed by him. Forty years later, in the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of Debaria Dam, the teenager Antonio (Damià Plensa) vanishes in the lake while swimming with his girlfriend Susana (Pilar Soto) and their friend Clara Borgia (Charlotte Salt). The police divers, with the support of the outsider photo journalist Dan Quarry (Michael McKell) that is filming the submerged Marienbad to write a matter about the town, try unsuccessfully to find the body. When eerie things happen in the spot, Dan and the local journalist and daughter of the builder of the dam Teresa Borgia (Raquel Meroño) disclose dark secrets about Marienbad, Salas and his evil cult of the power of the flame.

I am a big fan of Brian Yuzna, but "Beneath Still Waters" is a huge deception. The screenplay is a complete and flawed mess, with terrible development of characters and situations and many shameful lines. The acting in general is not good, and the lead pair shows no chemistry. The special effects are very reasonable, and I believe many actors and actresses have been dubbed in English. The sequence of the bacchanal recalls the disturbing cult "Society" in the debut of this great director. Unfortunately his two last works ("Rottweiler" and "Beneath Still Waters") are very disappointing. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Mistério no Lago" ("Mystery in the Lake")