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.
The big hitter of Valentines Day-Week 2022 has arrived.
Apparently adapted from a Graphic Novel by Bobby Crosby, Kat Coiro’s film version of Marry Me is a fun star studded rom-com, full of love, songs and love songs (all of which are infectious), an acceptable amount of cheesiness, it’s well made and different from anything that’s come before it.
Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson go all in together and produce some lovely chemistry on screen. In their mid 50s both of these stars have aged nicely and it makes for a real flawless portrayal of mid-life love, a time often for second chances with it. J-Lo once again reminds us just how multi-talented she is with her voice, her acting and her raw charisma and Wilson continues to hone in his everyday man’s down to earth persona. Sadly no iconic “Wow’s” were uttered in this movie.
It leaves very little room for error. That’s for sure. I mean, it’s so strange that MATH is heavily featured in a ROM-COM. Sure it’s simply a great way to contrast Charlie (Owen Wilson) a reserved Math teacher from the luxurious open book celebrity lifestyle of singer-songwriter-entertainer Kat (Jennifer Lopez) but clearly someone came up with a formula to solve for the perfect version of a Romantic Comedy.
Personally, Marry Me is too Starry Eyed to my taste. I feel no true connection to the movie but I totally get it’s appeal. I know it’s just me because I’m not the type of person who gushes over celebrities and especially not their love lives, both which make up the movie. I’ll still be there in the crowd, having fun, enjoying what I’m watching and noticing that others around me are too but I’ll never be as obsessively invested as some. I’m not what you’d call a “Stan”. But the movie is undeniably sweet.
The Spectators' Odyssey 