Below

It's unfortunate that Below's biggest liability as a film-- its script -- is also what draws many people to an otherwise obscure, poorly reviewed release, by virtue of the fact that Darren Aronofsky co-wrote it. Granted, Below boasts an intriguing setup: a U.S. submarine during World War II must ward off a host of internal and external threats, from mechanical failures to mutiny to menacing U-Boats to, yes, ghosts, but what's missing is narrative coherence, consistent characters, and genuine suspense.

Lt. Brice (Bruce Greenwood), the captain of a U.S. submarine during WWII, finds three survivors of a sunken British hospital ship, including Olivia Williams' physician. While being stalked by German U-Boats, the boat is badly damaged and forced to take cover at the bottom of the ocean floor. Meanwhile, someone or something, is preventing the sailors from repairing the ship. And air is running out. It's a perfect setup to exploit claustrophobia, violent sexual tensions, and the confused ideals of war. But Twohy and Aronofsky use the scenario to turn the submarine into a haunted house of progressively cheap thrills.

Dramatic musical and sound cues build towards lame jumpy scares that are actually false alarms. The marginally more legitimate horror moments occur when fearful sailors encounter a visual of a ghost, in a mirror, say. But there's about as much danger posed by a light flickering on and off (scored to a cymbal crash; edited as a jump cut) as there is by the ghost. Which is to say, not much. After about the fifth false alarm pseudo-scare, it becomes clear that Twohy is shooting blanks, relying on the most primitive of shock techniques, devoid of real suspense or terror.

The film's pedestrian, uninspired PG-13 approach to horror tactics aside, the narrative just doesn't make any sense. The more it reveals, the more it calls into question what it has just depicted. (*Huge spoilers herein. Stop reading if you plan on seeing the film*). For example, the narrative assumes that Brice along with the other leaders of the submarine suffer a bizarre form of amnesia. How else to explain why they don't assume that the ship they must attend to is the same one they attacked and then abandoned; or why none of them approach the survivors with a hint of recognition? Furthermore, when confronted with the strange occurrences, why do the major figures immediately assume the ghost is the former captain- as opposed to say, the hundreds of other people they accidentally killed then cravenly left to die?

Aronofsky, director Twohy, and co. have a mystery at the center of their tale but they fumble severely in unraveling it. The climax, a flashback loaded with potentially compelling themes about human error and mercy in the time of war, is directed as an afterthought. It's impossible to feel even retroactively connected to the film's J-horror ghost imagery when the inevitable story behind the ghosts is so carelessly depicted.

If the film had seemed consistent in at least its characterization, it may have worked. Despite strong attempts by two of my favorite actors, Bruce Greenwood and Olivia Williams, their characters cease to have identifiable personalities by the thirty minute mark, spewing out lines that awkwardly mark each new section of the disjointed, muddled plot. Stylistically, the dialogue devolves from period-appropriate military stoicism and vulgar sailor slang to nonsensical, post-modern hipster language, embodied by Zach Galifianakis' character, whose presence in the film is totally unwelcome and garish. The actors make you want to care for these people, but the film pushes and pulls them in so many different directions that they become dull instruments of a very bad script. Aronofksy's name on the credits may have been what attracted me to the film, but sadly, it's his, Lucas Sussman, and Twohy's screenplay that ruins the film.