10 Additional Dumb Things About this Movie...

After reading the impressions written by other people, I thought I'd add a few more that my girlfriend and I noted....

1. That boat would need to have been anchored to have not budged in the day*ish they were out. I have personally paddled a heavy, fiberglass, dead, V8 powered Ski Nautique, weighted down with water ballast (a total of which weighed about 3500-4000 lbs) by myself a distance close to twice the width of that pond they were in - using a water ski. Took an hour once I got a good cadence going. I had run it out of gas. A minor inconvenience. They were in a 400lb rowboat and didn't make a lick of progress all day, despite the 4 of them (4!) being terrified for their lives and full of adrenaline? They'd almost be able to make the thing get on plane if they worked together. Not really, but you get the idea.

2. Our "fair lady" made a huge mess with her eVite to this fun little party. She arranges to take herself on a weekend getaway, with 4 people with whom she's romantically tied. 2 dudes she's actively sleeping with, a girl she used to have an intimate relationship with, and one extra dude that she used to be in a full blown relationship with -- who was mysteriously invited along too. With those kinds of odds, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with that scenario? Her relationship with Johnny is so fresh that he's still bringing condoms on the trip thinking "well - maybe if I play my cards right...". Yeah. With that much sexual history in one boat, some dude was going to get his face punched or someone was going to get their feelings hurt, or both. If there is a Beneath (I) 2, and Kitty survived somehow, she should pick her weekend excursion pals more carefully, just to spare anyone getting sad.

3. That engine on Johnny's rescue tug was an old outboard trolling motor barely capable of moving a boat forward in a stiff wind, probably .5 - 2 horsepower. You could stop the propeller dead with a twine if you wanted to. But it cut through 3/4 inch heavy braided line immediately. Then continued to exert so much power, running submerged and upside down, enough to twist the boat 4 times in its own length and strangle poor Johnny despite getting his hand inside the rope to prevent strangulation to begin with?

4. We see the mysterious fish WAY too much, making that thing more like a dark Jim Henson creation than a terrifying leviathan from the abyss. They show that fish move fast for less than a second, perhaps the first or second time we see the fish. After that he's sick and probably dying with a stake through his body - yet still has the power to ram that HEAVY rowboat and stove a side in?

5. This movie cost $1,000,000 dollars to make. A million dollars. Someone's personal fortune. Knowing nothing concrete about how the Screen Actor's Guild decides to pay actors, did that money go to pay the cast and crew? This was a fairly unknown cast of pretty capable actors, so maybe. They have a wooden boat, a metal rowboat, a GMC Yukon XL and a trolling motor as the major visible expenses for the movie. The fish was a puppet and not a good one, probably controlled with submerged cables and not even a robot per se as others have said.....SO WHERE DID THE REST OF THE MONEY GO?????

6. That lake appeared to be a half mile x a half mile in size, probably less but distances like that are tough to judge on the water. They would have unobstructed views to anything happening on shore. How then, were they surprised that Johnny had not only made it to shore but had found a rowboat, mounted the outboard motor and launched his own rescue mission all by himself? In reality they would have been able to see every aching moment of that effort, and carry on a conversation the entire time with Johnny without even needing to yell.

7. This is one of two movies called "Beneath" that came out that year. How do you not know, as someone making a movie. I mean, how do you not know about that conflict? Baffles me. Talk about missing the element of "mindshare" that a unique title gets you... even if the movie is bad.

8. The aluminum rescue boat had a CT prefix on the hull number. Connecticut. It's a tiny tiny thing that only a boat person would recognize but it's the only time we learn anything whatsoever about where they are. It just annoys me that they never say they're in Connecticut. I assumed they were in the Pacific Northwest until that moment - and even then I just assumed they filmed it in Connecticut and got a rowboat for the movie but never took the time to "set" the events anywhere.

9. They lose their one strong swimmer immediately to a puncture wound. At least they did it in an interesting way, severing an artery and causing her to bleed out. I just think they could have made an effort to save her. Instead they drape her over the edge of the boat like - "whelp. Guess she's gone guys what's the plan now?"

10. It is almost impossible to describe to a non-boat person how hard it is to keep anything dry on a leaking rowboat (let alone a sinking one). Even if the fireworks were kept in that "waterproof" grocery bag, they'd be drenched if there was even an inch of water in the bilge. Yet they think they'll use the fireworks as some kind of weapon or distraction. Let me explain it this way: if you made a nice sandwich for yourself and put it in a plastic bag and sealed it, then you put your sandwich in a sealed cooler, put it on a canoe, put the canoe in the water, enjoy your wet sandwich. It's just how things go on a small boat. Enjoy your wet sandwich. And your fireworks are wet. Have a fun day!

It's tempting to think that the people who made this movie never spoke to anyone who has been stranded on a boat of any kind, has no knowledge of outboard motors, or fish, or lakes. Yet they made the movie anyway. As a fan of the story of the whaleship Essex, where a group of whalers became stranded on board 3 rowboat-style craft for 90 days, the portrayal of their stranding did have some good points, particularly the fact that everyone was fighting with one another and "voting" - but they would have needed to have been stranded on Lake Huron in the year 1491 for this sort of stranding to be possible. And even then they would have made miles of progress in a day - even without oars and paddling by hand. *beep* - the wind alone could carry them that far in a day!

What I DID like is that my girlfriend and I had a good time watching it. Clearly I've spent too much time thinking about this, but it could have been great. I really have a problem with movies that take on aviation or boating - and do it in a way that assumes there aren't MILLIONS of people who understand how planes work and are operated, and even more people have major, intimate familiarity with boats.

This is effectively a survival story though, and I love those. While I can find many faults with this movie, I can't hate it. We laughed a lot while watching it.