Underwater isn’t a Cloverfield movie, but it definitely is a [redacted] movie.
This article contains spoilers. Turn away now. You’ve been warned.
While William Eubank‘s Underwater kicks off with immediate intensity, wasting no time plunging Kristen Stewart and the rest of the cast into the deep sea nightmare we bought a ticket to experience, it admittedly lags a bit around the middle, and unquestionably could’ve used a tad bit more monster mayhem to pick up the energy. The film’s monsters, with their massive gaping maws and spindly, Cloverfield-reminiscent legs, only actually kill one character in the entire movie, and for the most part we only catch glimpses of them in the darkness.
The monsters are no doubt creepy, mind you, but it’s not until the final act that Underwater truly establishes itself as an all-time great in the aquatic horror arena. It’s in the incredible final act that all of the film’s flaws are forgiven and we truly realize what the characters are dealing with. Those monsters they’d been terrorized by, turns out, were mere children.
The final act of Underwater puts Kristen Stewart face to face with a MASSIVE behemoth that seems to have tentacles sprouting out of his face, the design of the monster calling to mind the iconic design of H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmare beast, Cthulhu. And that was no mere coincidence, as Eubank has confirmed that Underwater‘s big bad is indeed Cthulhu!
Lovecraft’s most iconic creation is in the public domain, you see, allowing for Eubank and his visual effects team to bring the monster to the screen in their own movie – which, aside from the appearance of Cthulhu at the end, certainly doesn’t outright adapt any of Lovecraft’s stories. Speaking with YouTube’s Mr. H this week, Eubank spilled the beans.
“Yeah, spoiler alert, this is a secret Lovecraft love story, where you get to see Cthulhu briefly at the end,” Eubank told Mr. H.
He continued, “He was written in the script as a big, whale-like creature. A massive behemoth – it was called The Behemoth. And in designing the movie – we were done shooting, but we obviously never shot the behemoth cause we were gonna do him later – I just basically was like… we were early enough in the design that was able to shift more to a mystical being. So that’s where we started going Lovecraftian. So I was like alright, [we’re] making Cthulhu here.”
“You see his wings too – you definitely see Cthulhu’s wings.”
“It’s just something that happens to them and they can’t explain it, and that’s where the cosmic horror comes from,” Eubank added, explaining the Lovecraftian influence overall.
You can watch the full chat about Underwater‘s ending below, wherein Eubank also talks about the backstory he created for the movie and whether or not the beast is truly dead.
