A few times every year, a film comes out that the internet simply cannot shut up about. Sometimes, it's because it's amazing and no one can stop raving about it. Often though, it's due to the film being hilariously bad. In the last few weeks, one new Netflix-distributed film has been sweeping the worlds of YouTube and Twitter because of how weird and terrible it is. It's a science fiction/horror film called What Lies Below.
The film has an interesting enough plot. It's about a teenage girl who comes home from a time spent at summer camp. Since she's been gone, her mother has met a new boyfriend who happens to be quite a bit younger than her, and very good looking. As time progresses, she starts to become suspicious of him and his intentions. This sounds like it's venturing into Lifetime stalker film kind of territory, and the film really does exactly that, but there is also a science fiction aspect that takes it out of that place a little. While the science fiction element could have been the coolest part of the movie, it adds so much weird stuff to the film that it almost would have been better as that straightforward Lifetime stalker film.
The entire movie really just doesn't make much sense and feels quite weird. The viewers jump into the lives of this mother and daughter, which seem quite dramatic and a lot is going on, and there's no context given at all. This could be fine, this could be a choice, and if enough is given to work with that can be very effective. In this film though, no. This film feels like it throws the viewer into the middle of a very weird mother-daughter dynamic. Tidbits of family history and character points are revealed, but nothing is shown or explained enough to make things make sense.
For example, there's some sort of plot established surrounding the daughter character inheriting a house or property from her presumed grandparent. And it's then revealed that the mother character had a bad relationship with her father because he didn't want her when she was a child. However, this isn't relevant to the characters or anything that happens and it doesn't reveal any of their characteristics. It's there for no reason. There are a few things like this that happen, where it feels like there's some joke or information that the viewers are supposed to be in on but they aren't because nothing is really explained or established.
The aforementioned science fiction element of this film feels so far out of place and strange. Basically, the big bad secret that the new boyfriend has is that he is not human. While it's been known the whole film that he has an affinity for water and sea creatures and he's trying to save sea populations, he actually is some kind of merman/fish person. He plans to impregnate human women to populate the world with fish people/human hybrids that can presumably survive in water. It's a very Lovecraftian kind of thing, also reminiscent of the film A Cure For Wellness in many ways, and while weird is okay this plot just feels so dumb. The audience is shown too much for it to be effectively mysterious, but there's not enough revealed for it to feel like a proper twist that makes sense. It would have been better if the boyfriend was just a weirdo stalker.
Perhaps the worst and most off-putting part of the film is the absurd amount of unnecessary sexual tension. This even exists between the mother and daughter characters, and it's weird. Sexual tension between the mother and her boyfriend, fine it's understandable. But why immediately is the daughter so into her mom's boyfriend? Why are the mother and daughter talking about sex like they're best friends? And in possibly the worst scene of the entire film, why was there even a moment where the teenaged daughter starts her period in a boat with her mom's boyfriend. And why did he react the way he did. It's so weird, and it adds an element of unwelcome sleaze to the film that makes the viewing experience far too awkward.
Many films fail because they over-explain and they do too much. It seems like that would be the case here with the weird science fiction plot twist, but in all ways, it just doesn't do enough. The movie is just poorly written and made. Its acting is awkward, its dialogue is bad, and it's honestly not even very interesting or attractive to look at. Unfortunately, it doesn't even have a "so bad it's good" or "so horrible it's hilarious" kind of quality, it's just really boring and kinda dumb. This is largely due to the intense amount of filler packed into What Lies Below, as well as the lack of depth given to any of characters. It was a recipe for disaster, and at least on that it delivered.