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Simply A Masterpiece

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

OK, the sound and dialogue seem a bit... off... and the characters weren't as well rounded as I usually like them. It has a Lovecraftian feel to it, with occult references that one can actually fact check. They are not how the movie portrays them, but whoever wrote this did their homework.Viewers should be warned: there are graphic allusions to rape, but it is brief and does not single out women (there is male on male rape as well). That's probably why this movie is getting terrible reviews. It seems these kind of movies only get 10 star ratings when women are the only ones victimized in explicit rape scenes. The orgy of madness at the end was not gratuitous or pornified, it is a portrayal of the result of malignant magic cast long ago. There is some nudity, but did not distract from the storyline, nor was it used as a cheap plot device to make the movie seem better than it was. Some parts made me laugh, but whatever missteps were made didn't make me lose interest.Overall I enjoyed this movie. It is a unique story obviously inspired by Lovecraft. Not once was I tempted to open another browser window. I wouldn't go as far to say that it was genius, or recommend anyone spend a lot of money on it. I would say, though, that like Cthulhu 2007 it is quite unappreciated.The music was good, the acting was competent despite the dialogue/sound issue, the visuals were excellent. The female characters were written strongly enough that they were participants in the story. The ambiance was excellent. I felt like I was pulled into a diabolical underwater world filled with grotesqueries of decades past. It's not a blockbuster, and it is low budget, but it's not worthless either.

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.

I'd heard nothing but bad things about this film; but decided to track it down anyway simply because it has so much promise. For a start it was directed by Brian Yuzna' part of the creative genius behind Re-Animator and director of horror masterpieces Society and Return of the Living Dead 3; and secondly, the plot; which is based on a book by Matthew Costello, sounded like a great base for a horror movie. I figured that with these two elements in place, things couldn't possibly be as bad as I'd heard. Well...to say things went wrong would be an understatement. The plot focuses on a Spanish village named Marienbad; a place where the locals are gradually succumbing to a Satanic cult lead by a man named Mordecai Salas. Someone or other has hatched a plan involving building a dam to flood the town and it's inhabitants; but the plan fails when a couple of no good kids end up freeing the cult leader before the town is engulfed in water. Fast forward forty years and the village of Desbaria stands in its place; though the cult leader is waiting for his revenge.The film gets off to a really good start as we watch a couple of kids traverse across a flooded town and into a brilliantly realised Satanic church where they are greeted by a group of bewitched locals. But once this is over and we move into the present day, things start to go downhill. The main problem with the film is that it's a mess. There are a handful of good ideas but they haven't been put together coherently which takes most of the credibility away from the film. The film also feels very cheap; the poor acting doesn't help in this respect, and neither does the turgid script which is littered with trite lines of dialogue. The film does feature some nice locations, which is nice, but that's really the only good thing I have to say about it. Anyone who has seen more than a few Brian Yuzna films will know that the director likes to let things descend into chaos so he can show a wave of graphic images; and that happens here, but it's not as good as it was in the likes of Society and really just caps off a very disappointing effort. I wouldn't hesitate to name this as Yuzna's worst alongside Faust: Love of the Damned, and only hardcore fans need apply.

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.