Director Arseny Syuhin makes the jump from short films to feature with Shudder’s latest acquisition, Superdeep. The story sees a group of military men and scientists exploring the world’s deepest borehole. Their research uncovers a very deadly threat, one that leaves the future of humanity in their hands. As the group scrambles to survive, it begins to fracture; those involved start to have opposing views on how to handle the situation. Can they find a way to work together to contain the new foe, or is this the end of humankind as we know it?
Superdeep riffs heavily off of The Thing, Annihilation, and Resident Evil – a potent mixture of ideas, but it fails to fully realise its potential. There are clear teething issues as Syuhin has shifted to the longer narrative challenge, the biggest issue being that of pacing. The film comes in at just underneath the two hour mark and is littered with vast periods of nothing happening. For example, it takes nearly half an hour for the story to arrive within the borehole and yet we still barely know anything about any of our characters, including our lead. Instead, we’ve witnessed trivial drawn-out events and it takes a serious amount of commitment for the viewer to even make it this far. Once down in the depths of the Earth, we encounter our next problem – a muddled narrative – that sees elements of the three aforementioned films battle it out for dominance of the story. Although sharing some narrative DNA, The Thing, Annihilation, and Resident Evil, are all very different movies. Whilst combining them sounds intriguing on paper, the reality here has a distinct lack of cohesion. Superdeep therefore ends up feeling like a completely different movie from scene to scene and it quickly becomes very difficult to work out what exactly Syuhin is trying to say.
Syurin’s saving grace lies within the effects work. There’s a strong strand of body horror on display, with characters being absorbed and consumed by the team’s discovery; the work is both beautiful and agonising to look at. Some of the imagery is straight out of the Giger playbook and goes a long way to push Superdeep past its pacing and narrative flaws. Money has also clearly been spent on the set design, creating a perfect otherworld that stands up against that seen in Ridley Scott’s Alien. The work on the shuttle lift that transports the team into the bowels of the Earth is especially slick and wouldn’t look out of place in a number of Hollywood blockbusters.
As first-time features go, Superdeep has plenty of good ideas to offer the viewer, but infuriatingly these elements quickly become buried beneath a muddled plot, an uncertain tone, and an overstretched pace. Much like last year’s Underwater, with a little more finesse Superdeep could have become the next big thing in sci-fi horror. Sadly, as it stands, it looks set to become a film that you watch once and then quickly forget about.
Superdeep arrives on Shudder from 17th June 2021.
Superdeep
Summary
Superdeep is a movie filled with elements that could be fantastic, but frustratingly, they aren’t fully realised.
