Beneath Still Waters (2005)

Director: Brian Yuzna

Starring: Raquel Meroño, Michael McKell

Run Time: 92 mins

Certificate: 18

 

Plot Outline: In 1965 in Northern Spain, a new dam is to be built which will flood the small town of Marinbad forever and create a new town nearby. Two young boys cross over the security barriers to play in the abandoned town for one last time, inadvertently releasing a horrible evil force that was trapped there and doomed to be submerged underwater forever. Forty years later and the new town of Desbaria is celebrating the construction of the damn when weird things start to happen in the water. People are going missing. The dam is beginning to leak. It seems that the evil force beneath the water has resurfaced.

The Review: What an absolute train wreck of a film. I don't think I've seen a film this disjointed since Legion of the Dead....and that was a real stinker! I honestly don't know where to start. Some films are just bad. Some have good intentions but end up paying the price for their budgets or lack of originality. Some, like this, just have the best of both worlds. It's got a pretty decent budget by the looks of things and clearly has good intentions. But it looks as though they had five directors each doing their own thing before banding it all together at the end.

The opening is decent enough with the two boys playing in a semi-submerged town only to come across a bunch of people chained in a basement in a house. Then one of them stupidly sets the big scary-looking guy free and he shows him his thanks by ripping his head in two and eating him. Kudos to the filmmakers here as you rarely see kids being harmed in horror films, let alone being brutalised like that! Unfortunately it's at this point where the film just goes off in about ten different directions. Not just content with the original story of the devil-worshipping cult being submerged underwater, we then get throat-ripping zombies appearing. We've got a dude who looks like The Tall Man from the Phantasm series barking orders to his minions and using magic powers. We've got black goo which attacks people like The Blob. We've got horribly deformed demonic creatures dragging people into the water. We've got ghosts warning about what is going to happen next. I mean how much can you cram in? It would have been good to have someone or something explain the connection to all of these occurrences. Someone thought "I've got a cool zombie scene to film" and they went ahead with it purely because it would cool to have it in the film. Not only content with the above events happening, we also have a mayor who refuses to believe anything is happening because he doesn't want his festival ruined (oh boy, I thought that old chestnut only came out during "monster on the loose" flicks). We've got a spooky-looking caretaker who finds a bottle of scotch just floating around and starts drinking from it (like you do). There's an amazingly hot chick who goes skinny dipping, only to come across her dead boyfriend and they proceed to have sex before he kills her. And there's a massive orgy at the festival when the townspeople become possessed and start having sex with each other (and also having sex with cakes, lots of cakes). Added to all of this is the fact that the film is bloody. People get ripped apart constantly. They cut their own legs off. The make-up effects of the zombies and demons and stuff (whatever hell else wasn't CGI) is top notch. But it's just complete mayhem.