A bunch of teenagers arguing with each other over petty trifles when there's a major concern in the water that could unite them to save the whole boatload.
Does nobody care about the environmental subtext to the movie?
Did anyone else notice the rating just plummeted? When I first came to this board a few months ago the rating was 6.1. Now it's 3.9. This Larry Fessenden guy should really stop making horror movies. His other horror movie Hypothermia has also seen his ratings drop dramatically within the last few months. First it was a 6.2. Now it's 3.9.
share"This Larry Fessenden guy should really stop making horror movies. "
Either that, or people who rate movies on the imdb seriously need to stop watching his films. They just don't seem to be a good fit.
Either that, or people who rate movies on the imdb seriously need to stop watching his films. They just don't seem to be a good fit.
In fact, my impression of the ratings on this website is that people really just have to treat movies less like entertainment and more like an art form.
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Some quick thoughts:
I will never get why Fessenden's films are so underrated. He features entertaining B-movie concepts and transforms them into social-political parables with high artistic design and pathos, often adding literate moments of drama and grand scenes of tension. Beneath is one of his such works, featuring thoughtful questions on the oppressive nature of capitalism presented in an outer shell of a creature feature. Rating: 7.0 / 10 (In 0.5 Increments, with 5.0/10 being an average film) ---------------------------------------
To answer the original question, I don't view it is so much as an environmental metaphor than a look at the corrupt nature of capitalistic dog-eat-dog societies. This is shown throughout the voting process to save oneself by sacrificing others in the film, and the various backgrounds of the characters. Also, like another poster in these boards eluded to, by bringing his friends out there to fit in and get the girl of his dreams, Johnnie betrays what his ancestry has sworn to protect ( much like how democracy is betrayed by greed and power.)
Leftist metaphors are abound in Fessenden's work, from The Last Winter's stance on Global Warning, to Habit's views of drug addiction and Wendigo's notions of masculinity, familial tradition, and how children cope with both of them.
I think there are two reasons why Fessenden's movies are hated: unlikable characters and poor monster costumes. For Wendigo and Hypothermia, the poor monster design jar you out of the movie so you can't possibly take it seriously. For Beneath, the unlikable characters seriously jarred me out of the movie even if the monster is good. I liked the Last Winter but I understand why people didn't care for the CGI moose-ghosts. It just wasn't their thing. However, I liked the Last Winter more for the sense of dreadful isolation in barren Alaska rather than any political or social metaphors.
shareAll the scores fall once the title reaches the general population, because its an average score, and the average person does not want to see kids arguing on a boat because of a plastic fish. That said, I liked it.
sharePeople also don't want to see stupid behavior that pushes all sympathy for the character through the roof. Yes, most horror movies feature stupid behavior from the characters. But some horror movies just push it so far through the roof with the stupidity that it jars me out of the movie. Stupid stuff like:
--deciding to reach out into the water with your hand for the other paddle instead of using the remaining paddle.
--a guy jumps off a boat and surfaces 20 feet away on the opposite side of the boat.
--people constantly paddling but never appearing to get out of the middle of a lake that's around 100 yards in radius.
--idiots screaming at a fish, "What do you want?!" as if the fish is going to respond, "I wanna eat you alive, you meddling kids. Guffaw!"
--a guy has a hatchet in his bag and never decides to use it either to strike the fish or cut the seats to make paddles. And even after his friends find said paddle they still take a long time to use the paddle to make seats. And when they finally do use the hatchet to make paddles, there is this cheery, acoustic, indie folk music that is completely out of place not only for that scene but for the entire movie.
--a nerd shouting, "I'll give you a good reason not to throw me off the boat. I'm gonna go pro and I'm gonna be better than you @ssholes! You hear me? Soon I'm gonna be so much better than you that you won't be worthy enough to kiss my shoes! So there! That's the reason why you should spare me and not throw me off this boat! If you know what's good for you, you'll keep me on this boat and throw yourselves off instead!"
--after they throw Johnny off the boat, they wanna bicker about it instead of focusing on paddling to shore, causing the fish to catch up due to their lackluster paddling.
--after throwing the geeky kid off, the brother is more concerned over the fact that his brother slept with his chick rather than trying his damnedest to get off a boat that is sinking into a lake with a giant man-eating carnivorous fish.
I think those and many others are the reasons why people didn't care for this movie.
Anyone can frankly overgeneralize and nit pick apart any movie for not feeling realistic and for characters doing dumb things. However, you do yourself a disservice if you do that.
I could literally go to the Spider Man or Batman boards and have a field day with how dumb a superhero concept is. But I understand that a man scaling walls with webs for hands and the bat mobile works in its own universe. Without such things, you do not have a story.
Storytelling trumps plot every time. There is a difference.
Storytelling is about characterizations, metaphors, and ideology etc.. Plot moves along the story.
There are only so many plots/dramatic situations out there, some say 6 or 7, liberal estimates put it at 36, tops. And that't it. Period. (Source: http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html
So, therefore, anyone who watches more than a handful of movies has seen a plot regurgitated all the time.
Therefore, plots don't matter, telling an important story with depth and higher meaning does.
I admit there is a line, a plot should generally be cohesive and tell its story without making someone confused. Unless of course, it is an abstract story. It also has to conform to its own universe's rules. (For instance, you can have an invincible character if you set that up or explain it to the viewer, but if it comes out of nowhere with no explanation then it breaks its own rules.)
However, your criticisms point out things that are central to the story/characters and properly move the plot along. If you stated that these actions went against how the characters were depicted, then you have critical substance. However, you did not. And I personally believe the characters acted true to their characteristics the whole way through.
As you might think if you were on a boat with a giant man eating fish and had to vote your friends to their death that you would do things differently.
That's very nice, but I don't see the point in watching it then. Why don't you watch the movie for artistic reasons, than for self-importance.
A movie should be analyzed on an artistic level, not how much it reflects our real world.
If you want realism, watch a a movie about a person talking about the weather and sitting at a desk for 8 hours at work.
However. if one still chooses to nit pick everything, I don't see someone enjoying art that much, and especially, I don't see those same people truly understanding it or knowing much about storytelling.
I understand what you are saying. You are saying we shouldn't trash characters in a movie for doing things we would not do. Because they are not us. They are different from us. So we should understand that they display their own behavior. Fair enough. However, just because I understand a person's behavior, doesn't mean I will sympathize or like the character. I understand Zeke said what he said about him being better than others because he was scared and couldn't think of any proper way to articulate why he didn't want to be thrown over board. Nevertheless, that still doesn't make me like him or care for him.
Also, some things characters do in a movie I cannot understand no matter how hard I try. I can't understand how anyone can think sticking their hand in the lake is smart after they've seen a giant man-eating fish. Nor can I understand how people find a hatchet but don't use it. And I definitely cannot understand how you could be sinking into a lake with a carnivorous monster and you're more concerned that your brother slept with your girlfriend to the point where you refuse to paddle ashore and let the boat sink. Those are the things that just jar me out of the story.
I am not necessarily asking for a realistic story. I know teenagers swimming in a lake with a giant fish no one has ever seen before is unrealistic. I am asking for realistic behavior as well as behavior and characterizations that will make me care about the characters I am watching. If I don't like the characters (and not one character in this movie was likable), how am I going to like the story?
Thanks for the response.
However, and I do not mean to sound antagonistic, but all those grievances you have in the second paragraph are just as petty. I think it's better that the filmmaker is trying to say something with his story, and such scenes as the brothers' confrontation advance the story, as well as characterization.
I mean, as you implied, does it say something about the character and the meaning/metaphor of the story if that character is less concerned with their survival than knowing about their cheating girlfriend?
I think we can lean a great deal about the character just by that lack of care for immediate self-preservation.
While i haven't seen the movie in a while-- and you weren't specific enough about what you are talking about-- to remember if the hatchet and the hand-in-the water made sense in context of the character's motivations (for instance, I remember they had to paddle with their hands so they actually had a chance to escape, which is better than just sitting there when a fish can break through your boat.) So I am pretty sure the movie made reasons for those instances. Whether you agree with them is besides the point.
As far as the characters being unlikable, I do agree. However, that was the point:
As I stated a few posts above, the whole movie is a look at the corrupt nature of capitalistic dog-eat-dog society. We are not supposed to like many-- if any-- of the characters because the entire point of the movie rests on that theme of self-preservation and feelings of superiority over other human beings.
IMDB has got this weird thing: I've got email alert activated when someone replies to a post I make. But sometimes I don't get an alert for a reply. So I don't know someone has replied unless I specifically check back to my post. Does that happen to you?
My response: You make a compelling point about how characters being unlikable is the point of the story. And how a character not being concerned about self-preservation is part of the overall theme. But my main problem is just because a story gets its message across to the audience clearly, doesn't mean the audience will like the story more. For me, characterization is the most important part of the story. I don't have to like the character. But I need to care about their outcome. I didn't care about their outcome at all. In fact, I turned it off when that dude wouldn't row because he was so concerned about his brother/girlfriend relationship. I only watched the rest a couple days later out of boredom. The rest was just as unsatisfying as the first half I'd watched.
That's my thing: if I don't care to learn what happens to the characters, the movie is garbage to me no matter how well done. For instance, I noticed you've seen the Lord of Tears, like I have. It's that Scottish movie about a man who moves back into his old manor, meets a mysterious American woman, and is haunted by "the Owl Man", a creature from an old Celtic myth. I understand that the director was trying to show how grief over a dying loved one can cause people to become weak to the point where they'd do harm to innocent people, even to those they love. But since I didn't care for the characters, understanding what the director was trying to show doesn't automatically make me like the movie. It's funny how both Lord of Tears and Beneath have a lot in common for me:
--unlikable characters
--an isolated setting that could have been put to good use but wasn't
--a monster that could have been made to appear terrifying
--out of place pop music at the wrong time (the dance music during the swimming pool dance scene in Lord of Tears and the indie folk pop during the chopping the paddles scene in Beneath)
--the villain isn't killed and the main protagonist(s) die ignobly
--characters who are supposed to be friends turning on each other
Overall, a movie must have interesting characters whose fate interests me for me to like it. No amount of me understanding what the director is trying to say will make me overlook bad characters. I feel most people are the same way.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I certainly understand your argument, even if I like it for those same reasons.
I apologize if I came of harsh or too opinionated.
I think for me, and probably all people, our overall opinion of a film is only driven by instinct.
In that, we either connected to it or we didn't.
In that same way, the purpose of a review-- or thinking about it afterwards, even talking about it with friends--- is for me to make sense of that instinct. I think if one is honest with themselves, a review or discussion just gives that opinion definition. Much like rating a film is a gauge of that opinion.
For me, my opinion of a film doesn't change quickly very often. However, there has been a few times when I put a good amount of time between my viewings, such as with Spring (2014) and 2013's Cheap Thrills, that I rewatched what I thought to be only-average films, to later be quite better than that.
I don't know why my opinion of them changed, but it did. I think sometimes rewatching a film much later helps, as you know more about what to expect and what the film is trying to do and say... thus, you can get a new experience out of it.
Of course, there have been plenty of films from when i was much younger that I have watched again, and it had the opposite effect on me.
Maybe if you saw it again down the road, even in a few years, you would like it more. Maybe you would hate it more, or just think the same. I always think it's odd how time can change these sort of things.
But that's enough of me waxing my philosophy. And do and think what you want......
As while I don't agree with you, I do understand-- and feel you are a good enough at conveying your opinion-- to appreciate your thoughts.
So, thank you for discussing it with me. Always a pleasure!
Best,
Nick S.
PS. And yes, I don't get notifications for responses, either.