The Creature Below

The marine biologist Olive Crown (Anna Dawson) applies to the research of Dr. Fletcher (Zacharee Lee) in deep waters and is hired. However Olive is attacked by a huge creature that damages her underwater equipment and she has amnesia with the trauma. Dr. Fletcher fires Olive and she finds an egg in the equipment and she brings it home. She leaves the egg in the basement of her house, and soon the egg hatches and Olive captures the offspring to study. She tries every type of fish to feed the creature but none satisfies it. Olive finds that the creature feeds only with her blood. Soon Olive kills people to feed the creature. Meanwhile her boyfriend Matthew "Matt" Gardiner (Daniel Thrace) realizes that his girlfriend is changing her behavior, but he does not suspect that she is feeding the creature with blood from her victims. When Olive's sister Ellie Crown (Michaela Longden) comes to her house to spend a couple of days, she finds that something is wrong with Olive and snoops around the basement with tragic consequences.

"The Creature Below" is a low-budget film with a story that recalls the sci-fi from the 50's and a lame production in the same quality of the SyFy channel. However if the viewer watches this B-movie with very low expectations, he or she may even like it. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

It starts off with sharpness and moves along at a brisk pace. Not very gory, not a terribly frightening movie, which to me are good points, just solid fun science fiction, like the old 50's movies but sharper and more stylish.

Lovecraftian is a good description. Low-budget, of course, but the director did very well with what he had. The lead actress is very good, the other actors provide good support.

I really enjoyed this.

But still think it was worth a watch despite the somewhat bad acting.

What kept running through my mind as I watched this movie was "what motivates someone, anyone, to make a movie like this?" I'm not speaking about the genre or subject of the movie, but rather a very legitimate question of what is the driving force to make a movie with the primary actress having no acting ability, the writing being almost non-existent, no real direction, and the lowest production value imaginable. Essentially it seemed like not a single person involved had any desire to make this movie.

My review isn't even regarding whether this movie is good or bad, as it's clearly meant to be a campy movie, as that's perfectly fine and often quite enjoyable. But rather there's something so completely off about this movie that it strikes me as extremely out of place. Like when you see a business in your town that seems to never have any customers, nor even seems to want any, but has been around forever supposedly making plenty of money and you get the idea that there might be something more to their business model. That is this movie. It wasn't made to be watched.

Really I'd give it a 1 but I did make it completely through the film, and there was 1 redeeming line near the end which I won't spoil but I presume was the only tag line planned for this entire film.

A good concept, not an original one but with a real potential to be both fun and scary, and a creepy-looking DVD cover were what drew me into seeing 'The Creature Below' in the first place. Also have gotten some entertainment out of low-budget creature films, though there are too many weak or less ones.

'The Creature Below' is not good, let alone great. It is also not terrible, let alone a complete shambles, and has good points that make it semi-watchable. There are certainly far worse films in the genre, of similar creature films and overall and it didn't leave me angry or cringing, just that it is very underwhelming that doesn't do a good job with its objectives of being fun or scary.

Starting with the positives, the monster does have some creepiness. There are moments where 'The Creature Below' is moderately scary and fun, and it doesn't take things too seriously or go overboard on the camp factor.

It's effectively lit and shot too sometimes. The soundtrack has eeriness when it isn't being intrusive or obvious. Michaela Longden tries.

Conversely, a lot of things bring 'The Creature Below' down. The acting is generally not good, Anna Dawson being especially terrible in the lead and it does kill the film. The characters are dull and sometimes annoying, meaning there is never much of a reason to make one care for them. Some of the decision making as such bordered on silly.

Although the creature was not bad in personality, the creature effects are very cheap-looking. Even for low-budget, 'The Creature Below' is pretty slapdash, especially in the editing. Excitement, thrills, creepiness and suspense are too far and between. The scares are generally not enough and suffer from predictability and lack of tension. The story is far too minimal, another thing that affects the pacing with the padding and over-stretching, bland and often ridiculous.

Overall, semi-watchable at best and mostly mediocre. 4/10 Bethany Cox