It’s not often that movies are actually filmed in and take place primarily underwater but if done right, it feels like the perfect angle for a horror movie.
Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House gives you just enough time to take in one big breath before diving head first into the cold waters of a French man made lake for the rest of its runtime.
In this particular lake is an abandoned mansion that conjures a young haunted travel vlogging couple, Ben and Tina played by James Jagger and Camille Rowe, to monetarily explore its eerie presence.
Expecting to find only the large structure left standing on the lake floor, what they find inside is much more than expected and with absolutely no means of escape. This mansion is enormous and that’s clear when the couple descend upon it and swim around its exteriors but once inside the completely boarded up place, the many creepy rooms still mostly preserved in completely surrounding watery darkness makes you feel uncomfortably claustrophobic.
The dark and sinister history of the Montegnac Mansion is awakened by the arrival of its latest guests and so this aquatic exploration quickly turns into a horrifying race against time and the terrors that still lurk within this sunken purgatory. Sanity levels deplete even faster than the supplied oxygen tanks do and it fully illustrates wave after wave of dreadful and hopeless panic.
Bustillo and Maury have collaborated on a handful of horror movies since the early 2000s. From their first and still best work on the 2007 film Inside, each movie sadly seemed to get worse from there, especially their 2017 Leatherface film. This movie is easily their 2nd best movie so far. The Deep House is a rather straightforward horror movie but with technical design that is just exceptionally incomparable to any other horror movie out there.
Check it out on Hulu or Paramount Plus.
Two Rom-Coms hit the streaming world in what could be considered their Super Bowl of release windows: Valentines Day Week. While both offer sweet and hilarious stories of love, they couldn’t feel more different.
The smaller of the two is Jason Orely’s I Want You Back and it’s a sincere little Rom-Com lead by an absolutely adorable Jenny Slate and Charlie Day duo.
The plot is fairly original. Emma (Slate) and Peter (Day) get dumped. It’s after the two randomly meet during a stairwell crying sesh that they realize they have a lot in common and want the same thing. So the two decide that with each other’s help they can surely win back their exes, who they firmly believe are their soulmates. It’s a cute chance encounter and it becomes the start of a wholesome friendship but of course with the potential for so much more. With how much these two have in common and how easily and quickly they hit it off, you can see where this is going. But how it gets there makes for an incredibly authentic and original love story.
My only real complaint is in its portrayal of its main characters. I do think it leans heavier into Charlie Day’s character in stereotypical fashion, he’s a rather successful VP at his company, He was with his significant other for 6 years, he’s great with kids, genuinely kind hearted and of course ends up with the girl. While it’s always made clear that Emma is essentially the opposite. She works a 9-5 as an orthodontist’s receptionist, She was only with her significant other for just over a year, she’s an all around mess who still hasn’t really figured things out so she’s forced to share her apartment with a college couple and so she comes off much weaker than her male friend. I only bring this all up because it feels, well, too stereotypical of a rom-com in a movie that feels fresher and more authentic than most.
I Want You Back doesn’t carry the theatrical star studded weight that Marry Me, Valentines Day 2022s other new Rom-Com does, but this movie is also well worth potentially adding into your Valentine’s Day plans and future Rom-Com marathons!
The Spectators' Odyssey 