Some horror films are bad in a fun way, like drunk karaoke: embarrassing but entertaining. Beneath Still Waters is bad in a way that makes you wish someone had turned off the mic, pulled the plug, and set the building on fire. Directed by Brian Yuzna—yes, the same guy who gave us the delightfully deranged Society—this Spanish-British collaboration drowns under its own weight, its script, and its CGI budget that could probably be covered with loose change found in a laundromat.
The premise? A cursed village swallowed by a dam in 1965 rises to haunt a nearby town in 2005. Sounds like gothic fun, right? Wrong. Instead, we get awkwardly dubbed dialogue, supernatural shenanigans with the tension of a traffic jam, and special effects so laughable you half expect them to apologize before they appear.
The Plot: Lovecraft for People Who Flunked Reading Comprehension
Once upon a time, in the picturesque village of Marienbad, some occultists decided to play “Summon Satan” while under the spiritual guidance of a Crowley knockoff. Naturally, they unleashed a supernatural evil so powerful that the best solution was… to build a dam. Because if horror cinema has taught us anything, it’s that bureaucracy fixes everything.
Fast-forward forty years: the dammed village is still stewing in its supernatural juices, and shocker, evil starts seeping out. Cue mysterious drownings, inexplicable disappearances, and local authorities who handle it all with the same urgency you’d bring to filing tax returns.
The script promises gothic dread but delivers something closer to a soggy soap opera. There’s a mayor, a few cops, a diver with the personality of boiled cabbage, and a pair of sisters caught in the crossfire. By the third act, when the demon-thing finally decides to show up, you’re so bored you’d welcome drowning yourself just to escape.
Michael McKell as Dan Quarry: Bland Hero in a Bland World
Dan Quarry, played by Michael McKell, is supposed to be the rugged protagonist—a journalist with grit, determination, and possibly hemorrhoids. Instead, he looks and acts like someone who wandered onto the set while searching for the craft services table.
McKell spends most of the film staring into middle distance with all the intensity of a man remembering he left the oven on. When he does speak, the dialogue is so stilted it’s as if he’s performing Shakespeare translated through Google Translate and then read by a GPS.
You’re meant to root for him. You won’t.
Raquel Meroño and Charlotte Salt: Sisters in Suffering (and Acting Choices)
Teresa (Raquel Meroño) and Clara (Charlotte Salt) are the emotional anchors of the film—or at least, they would be if the screenplay didn’t treat them like inflatable pool toys. Teresa is the elder sister who doesn’t believe in spooky nonsense until she very much has to, while Clara is the obligatory rebellious youth who rolls her eyes at everything until she’s being chased by water demons.
Salt does her best, bless her, but you can only work with what you’re given, and here that’s dialogue like: “It’s coming from the water!” No kidding, Sherlock. Where else would it be coming from, the salad bar?
Patrick Gordon as Mordecai: Discount Aleister Crowley
Every horror movie needs a villain, and Beneath Still Waters gives us Mordecai Salas (Patrick Gordon), an occultist so evil he… looks like your uncle who collects skull rings and quotes Nietzsche on Facebook. He’s supposed to be terrifying, but he spends most of his screen time skulking around like a rejected extra from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The film builds him up as this unstoppable force of darkness, but when he finally appears, you realize the real evil was the makeup department. He looks like he lost a fight with a bottle of foundation and some eyeliner.
The Creature: The Real Horror is the CGI
Here’s the thing: when you market a horror movie about a flooded ghost town, you expect some memorable monsters. What we get instead are CGI abominations that look like they were rendered on a Windows 95 demo disc. When Javier Botet (yes, the Javier Botet, later of REC and Mama) makes his film debut as one of the creatures, you’d think it would be eerie. Instead, he’s buried under digital sludge so bad it makes Sharknado look like Jurassic Park.
There’s a moment where a zombie-like figure bursts out of the water, and rather than shrieking, you laugh—because it resembles a rejected Goosebumps cover.
The Atmosphere: Drowning in Missed Potential
A horror film set in a submerged village has limitless potential for atmosphere. Imagine creaking underwater churches, ghostly bells tolling in the depths, drowned faces pressed against the surface. What does Yuzna give us? Brown water, fog machines, and jump scares timed with all the precision of a broken alarm clock.
Even the soundtrack seems confused, alternating between ominous strings and the kind of generic rock you’d hear in a mid-2000s car commercial. Instead of being terrified, you half expect a voiceover to yell, “Toyota: Moving Forward.”
The Editing: Cut, Paste, Pray
Editing in horror is about rhythm—building suspense, releasing it, catching the audience off-guard. Here, it feels like someone dropped the footage on the floor, scooped it up in random order, and said, “Close enough.”
Scenes drag on forever, then abruptly cut away, leaving you wondering if the projectionist fell asleep. At one point, we cut from a dramatic revelation to someone making coffee. Honestly, the coffee scene was scarier.
The Gore: Waterlogged and Worthless
The film tries to compensate for its lack of atmosphere with gore, but even that feels half-baked. A few severed limbs here, a decapitation there—but it’s so poorly staged that it feels like you’re watching a haunted house staffed entirely by unpaid interns. The blood looks like ketchup left out in the sun.
Dark Humor Takeaways
-
If you thought drowning was bad, wait until you watch this.
-
The true evil isn’t beneath the waters—it’s in the script.
-
The monsters are so bad, they make Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island look like The Exorcist.
-
Mordecai Salas is less “dark sorcerer” and more “man who got lost on the way to a goth concert.”
-
The scariest part is realizing Brian Yuzna once directed Re-Animator and then made… this.
Final Verdict: Beneath Still Waters, Beneath All Standards
In the end, Beneath Still Waters is a film that squanders every ounce of potential it had. The concept of a drowned village filled with occult horrors could’ve been chilling, but what we got was a damp squib of clichés, bad acting, and worse CGI. Watching it is like drowning—not in terror, but in sheer disappointment.
If you’re looking for scares, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for unintentional comedy, well, dive in—the water’s awful.
