HORROR DVD/BLU-RAY REVIEWS

A small town in Spain is flooded to create a dam. However, buried with the town is a modern day devil, and he's ready to take revenge.

Lame. I thought long and hard about a single word that would truly define Beneath Still Waters, and I believe that four letter selection does the most appropriate job. It’s not as if this is a horrendous film. Far from it. Some good qualities do exist with pretty good special effects and a story that slightly improves as the film progresses. However, lame also effectively describes the acting, the general plot, and the logic of the damn thing. Now as a horror film, some great gore occurs along with one of the better mass orgies I’ve seen in quite some time. However, to reach that point in the runtime, you have to suffer through roughly an hour of bad acting and bad pacing and a bad story. Perhaps if some drinking were occurring, it could enhance the film with a pure cheese factor. But sober, I was bored. Everything up until the last 30 minutes was clichéd nonsense that tried too hard to be quality. They hid the good special effects until the third act. Up until that point, the great characters had supposedly hooked me. Suuuree. This film is essentially in line with everything I’ve seen from director Brian Yuzna thus far. He makes decent low budget horror movies with impressive effects and wonderful gore, but nothing I’ve never seen before. He’s no Uwe Boll, so he has that going on for him.

Now if Beneath Still Waters has a claim to anything, it can be known as one of the strangest devil tales that I can remember. Here, the devil is named Mordecai Salas and looks like the Tall Man from Phantasm if a generic Mick Jagger had played him. But he isn’t interested in overtaking mankind. He doesn’t necessarily want the souls of men. Instead, Beneath Still Waters is an economic devil’s tale, where the battle really comes from landownership in a small town in Spain as Mordecai and the old mayor battled for the right to live their lives freely. Well, the mayor got his way and had the town flooded for a dam. Mordecai and his followers forgotten, buried beneath some not so still waters. Think old Mordecai was pissed 40 years later for the anniversary of the dam? You bet. Now as a villain, he works, pulling off that suave bad guy look. And what bad guy doesn’t drive a Mercedes when released from a watery damnation? We all would.

Remember, just because a movie isn’t horrible, doesn’t mean it’s good either. In fact, Beneath Still Waters seems stupid. Wait, what was that four letter word?

Video: Letterbox Version 1.78.1

Audio: It was a little quiet for my taste. No specs as this was a screener.

Screener copy. No extras for me to review.

Not unwatchable by any means, but far from classic material. It's got gore and effects, but little else to offer to warrant a viewing.