Underwater’s Movie Monster Explained: Origin & Real Life Inspiration

William Eubank’s claustrophobic 2020 horror film, Underwater, presents audiences with a monster equal parts terrifyingly enigmatic and disconcertingly familiar.

Set 11,000 meters under the sea in the murky depths of the Mariana Trench, the film follows the crew of a deep-sea drill as they deal with the fallout of a catastrophe: a natural disaster destroys the structural integrity of the thin metal walls separating them from over 10,000 atmospheres of salt water pressure.

The movie was originally filmed in 2017, which explains the presence of T.J. Miller, and was delayed due to Disney’s purchase of 20^th Century Fox. Finally making its way to the silver screen, it has been met with mixed reviews. Action-packed from the first minute, it doesn’t introduce the monster, or the scale of its threat, until late into the film.

The Origin Behind The Monsters In Underwater, Explained

A freak earthquake destroys 70 percent of the crew’s base. As the characters fight their way towards the surface, they come across strange, human-looking fish creatures with a penchant for violence. Liam Smith (John Gallagher Jr.) theorizes that shift in the ocean floor opened up a bridge between two ecosystems, one of them being home to these brutal predators. Emily (Jessica Hanwick), a research assistant brought onboard to study marine life, explains that the earthquake itself is their fault. An analogy for climate change, it represents the way human greed is turning the ocean itself antagonistic “We’ve drilled too deep. We’ve taken too much,” Emily despairs. The ocean is taking back.

The Connection Between The Creature In Underwater, Real Life, And Other Monster Media

The monster in Underwater is disturbing: gelatinous, pallid, bony. It is a carefully designed creature that forms part of a long tradition of movie monsters, and rings true to real life. Those who spend their time trawling the internet for images of what lies beneath the murky depths might recognize in the Underwater monster the elongated body of an oarfish, the wispy gelatin of a salp, the clouded eyes of a frilled shark, the needle-like teeth and vampire air of a fangtooth fish.

Underwater clearly takes several cues from Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror flick Alien. In both, the crew initially encounters the monster in infant form: a creepy fetal creature unlike any ever witnessed before. It also borrows from Alien’s contrast of tight claustrophobic spaces against an agoraphobic vastness. The monster in Underwater expresses the same viciousness as Alien’s Xenomorph, an unrelenting threat of single-minded determination. The titles are similar, a single word that underlines the main threat of the movie: in Alien, the Xenomorph, in Underwater, the environment. Although some critics panned Underwater as a subaquatic Alien rip-off, it is measured in its homage to the classic sci-fi movie. It takes inspiration, but presents something new.

The final monster of Underwater represents a threat of unprecedented scale, leaning into a more literary angle. It is a Gargantuan god, the design capitalizing on the potential of large cinema screens. With its tentacled face and threat of complete existential annihilation, it elicits images of Cthulhu, a cosmic entity that made its first appearance in H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Call of Chtulhu”. A malevolent water god, Lovecraft describes it as follows: “a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.” To anyone leaving the theatres after watching Underwater, this description is eerily similar, taking the amalgamation of all the audience’s worst fears about the ocean to new, otherworldly heights.

About The Author

Shannon Lewis
(79 Articles Published)

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Shannon Lewis is a features and news writer on Screen Rant. She has experience in editorial working as the deputy editor for Specialty Food, an online and print magazine, curating its news section and social media. She has worked as a freelance writer since 2017, writing articles, features, and profiles in a wide range of topics, from business and tech to pop culture and media. Previously, she has also worked as a ghost writer for a fiction manuscript, and co-founded arts-and-literature magazine, Octarine.

Hailing from Queretaro, Mexico, she is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s English Literature with Creative Writing program. An avid reader and fan of writing, she leverages her love of literature to dissect movies in her favorite genres, including horror, rom-coms, and superhero movies. Her focus is on the cross-section between story, cultural background, and character development. When she isn’t busy reading everything ever published under the mantle of Image Comics, you might find her writing fiction, rock climbing, or putting together a horror anthology with friends.

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