Beneath

Bad, not in a good way.

If you're going to make a low budget shark/croc/piranha knock off you need talent. No talent? You need good actors. No talent and no good actors available? You need really inventive kills. None of the above = weekend hobby film making. Dumb, illogical, boring boring boring. And, why did they always paddle towards the furthest shore???

Beware what's lurking in the lake. Six friends celebrate one last break together, but encounter a deadly, man eating fish.

I'd be surprised if anyone who watches this film, is going to go into it with any high expectations, mine were pretty low, and were realised.

A low budget attempted gore fest, which has quite literally been done to death. Sadly it doesn't offer up anything original, and the million other times it's been done, it's been done better.

If you like those films on the horror channel, megalodon, sharktopus and ghostshark etc, then this may be up your Street, for me, it was almost a painful watch, apart from a few moments of tension.

Clichés galore, including the handsome, irritating jock, I have thrown him in first.

Mark Margolis is hugely wasted here, which is a shame, as he is the one here that provides any sort of presence, the group of youngsters are energetic, if perhaps a little raw.

Poor, 4/10.

The oversized antagonist of this run of the mill creature feature isn't a bad specimen and definitely looks like something out of the River Monsters alumni, not too far beyond realistic proportions. But that's about all I can praise in this otherwise irritating labour as six high school seniors try to stay afloat a sinking row boat as they're stalked by the voracious lake monster whilst tensions amongst the group threaten their survival.

Most of the characters are clichés (the nerd, the jock, the outsider) and some are plainly irritating, not to mention uneven as the plot meanders from one fatality to the next. It doesn't take long for this lemon to lose its zest, the brittle relationships deteriorating into ridiculous scenarios that accelerate the attrition rate beyond I'm sure even the appetite of the assailant. Aside from the abysmal acting and puerile dialogue, the key weakness in the plot is the fact that the riverbank is clearly visible in almost every shot, yet despite their obvious proximity to shore, these directionless debutantes never seem to get any closer to it. Had they been depicted further from land in a vast lake, the situation would've been more believable.

Unlike the typical monster movie, there's a rather morbid conclusion to this aimless outing, though it doesn't necessarily redeem the previous 80-minutes which even by B-movie standards is pretty mediocre.

Went into this with sort of high expectations. Love a good water monster film and don't mind them low budget. I saw this trailer a while back on You Tube and thought it looked good. Basic premise - characters all with annoying character traits and not that enjoyable to watch end up on a lake with a medium sized fish puppet. Maybe my expectations were too high but the movie doesn't deliver on the trailer.

The creature looked awful and probably the most fake I have seen besides most the creatures on SYFY. They show too many close up, medium and long shots of real bad fish model which clearly looks fake. I appreciate, what looked to be, practical effects over CGI but in this case it didn't help the film. Some of the better scenes with the fish is when it is submerged in the water or a shadow in the water. Its huge eyes look fake as and should have been darker to hide that fake-ness.

The story is unremarkable and the characters, as written, are awful. I feel the actors did their job and no criticisms there - though none shine through. The director, I feel is sloppy as there is no build up for tension in his scenes, he rushes moments that should have levity (most death scenes besides the first girls) and the cinematography is amateurish. The director should have been in control of these aspects. The aspects of having friends making decisions about who to use as fish bait is as stupid as it sounds and comes across like voting for Big Brother. The teen love triangle and angst did leave some room for the actors to emote but again the director I feel didn't push or get the best out of them. The editing and the music was god awful and ruined some aspects of the suspense in scenes being too loud/bombastic when a softer more ambient soundtrack would have been better.

With all that said I WOULD advocate for the director to be financed and to continue developing and the film was not a complete waste. It does sit well with SYFY type of films and as stated my expectations may have been too high has it was a awesome trailer.

There was not a single person I cared about dying in this flick.