Written & Directed By: Sean Cain
Review by Kelsey Zukowski
Mixing reality television shows with movies can often be problematic. It often adds an automatic cheesiness to the film. It is a fairly known thing that reality shows are far from reality. So having this a focus of a film makes it seem fake. One movie that actually raised on this challenge was American Dreamz. It was a satire on reality shows like American Idol and did an excellent job of comparing this to the political system in a metaphorical. However, many films that attempt this end up suffering because of it as in the cases of Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (Read Review), The Condemned (Read Review), and now Naked Beneath the Water. It attempts to intertwine horror and a reality show, but this does nothing for the film.
Pelle’s (Cain) brother, Robert (Wright) has been missing for a month. So he goes to Robert’s apartment looking for him. As kids, Robert seemed to wander off and go missing a lot. Pelle was left with the burden of keeping track of him. He does become concerned when he watches a popular reality television show called, “Public Enemy #1”. It is a show that glamorizes serial killers. Killers send in their tapes of their murders in to the show competing against all others. Different videos are shown every week and whoever is thought to be the best is awarded the title of Public Enemy #1 of the year. So far, 428 have been killed as a result of the show and there are 10 current contestants. Two of these contestants include The Shaver, who shaves his victims and then blows them up and The Bathtub Killers who force their victims to have kinky sex and then drown them in the bathtub. Pelle recognizes one of the murders shown on the show to have taken place in Robert’s apartment.
After staying there for a while, he starts receiving mysterious phone calls. They appear to be from the voice of a killer. Pelle keeps checking with the police on the status of the search of Robert. The voice warns him not to though. This is the voice that told him to watch Public Enemy #1 in the first place, so he is sure there is some connection between him and the murder that supposedly took place in his brother’s place. He might even be responsible for Robert’s disappearance. Soon, a girl he had over, ends up missing too. Meanwhile, on the show there seem to be more sick and twisted murders every week. By the time Pelle realizes the dangers that surround him, it is too late and he is resorted to being a sacrifice for entertainment and egos.
The acting in the film was terrible. It brought the film down immensely. The director and writer, Sean Cain, also starred in the film. He really didn’t do anything positive for the movie in any aspect though. Bonnie Steiger played the host of the show. She has had real life experience as a t.v. host. I suppose she did alright, but it was no performance that would blow you away. At the end she exposes a different side to her, but this really isn’t very different than what we have previously seen of her. We should be shocked and this should seem extremely out of character, but it just seems typical. Jim Wright probably does the best in the film. In the beginning, his acting suffered quite a bit. Much of his performance is still somewhat laughable, but at the climax at least it seems as if there is some real emotion for the first time in the film.
I do think the idea behind the reality show could have been good. There are good elements in it. Power and sometimes fame are usually qualities that some killers pride themselves on. Being recognized by the entertainment industry would be a great way for a murderer to feel appreciated for his actions and would make him powerful, being even more successful than others who compete against him. Also, since the show is thought to be real, it is promoting and condoning violence and torturous ways of killers. Naked Beneath the Water could have critiqued this type of behavior that can be shown in our society. Instead, it ended up just being a mess.
The delivery of the movie itself was done very poorly. Everything in the film seems completely scattered. It seems so random and there really is no pacing. There is no consistency and yet it still seems so predictable. There are some pretty out there things that are mentioned or shown in the film. However, nothing seems like much of a surprise. No feeling is in this movie, so there is none for the audience to feel either. Naked Beneath the Water relies too heavily on the music as well. It is almost a cue telling us that something is going to happen and we are supposed to be scared now. There is really nothing to be scared of here. The movie tries to be suspenseful and sick, but it fails in both of these ways. It becomes more graphic as you go along, but really not much is shown aside from some blood. Even for those who thrive on gore, I doubt this film would appeal to you. The actual murders that do take place before as are nothing but copycat murders of those on the show. This idea was shown much more effectively in Scream, showing us the glamorization of Hollywood violence. Many other things that were wisely poked fun at, Naked Beneath the Water does and takes itself seriously in doing so. It is a film that is an example of bad filmmaking all around from the acting to the direction to the script and decided not to develop on what could have been a good concept.
Grade: D-
Starring: Sean Cain, Jim Wright, Bonnie Steiger, Richard Teran
- Kelsey Zukowski
