What Lies Below, 2020: NR
Subtitle: The most shocking scene you’ll see this year! Plus: fisher of men.
Who to look for:
Ema Horvath – 16yo Libby. Someone unkindly wrote that she already has lines in her forehead, as she is older irl. I thought she was cute and believable.
Mena Suvari – Michelle, her mom. Ok.
Trey Tucker – Hubba, hubba. Also, he has stage presence. Tres overlooked.
Once Upon a Time…
First off, don’t get this movie confused with the other sci-fi lake thrillers, What Lies Beneath, with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, or Beneath the Surface, which now I want to see! But I promise you, you won’t be disappointed with What Lies Below, even though the actors are not as well known.
Amazon offers even more confusing titles.
Netflix should get some better synopsis writers, though, since I almost skipped this movie. They made it sound like like a mother daughter contretemp, and I have no interest in the Gilbert Girls or similar. Yes, mother and daughter are key players…but romance and the new guy in town are the focus.
Mom picks up high school daughter Liberty (Ema Horvath) from camp, and their chat in the car is quite amiable. Mom tells Libby she has a new beau! At home, Libby meets, and is entranced by, marine biologist John Smith (Trey Tucker), her mother’s well-endowed, often half-naked boyfriend. As are the rest of us.
John’s almost inappropriate warmth to her, and her own hormonal response adds as much suspense to the scene as her questions about his background and intentions. I thought, oh, Netflix made a mistake. This isn’t a sci-fi movie, it’s some kind of Stepdad or even Lolita time.
Follow the science! Or don’t.
John plows ahead with his new friend Libby, and tells her all about the science project he’s working on: training lampreys to live in salt water, instead of fresh, since soon all earth water will be salty. Now here’s where this becomes timely: Just this week, some articles discussed a plausible Loch Ness Monster, (altough some scientists are now walking that back). Possible, because plesiosaur dinosaur fossils indicate they moved from salt water to fresh water.
So John’s project plot point is biologically possible. John shows Libby his basement lab, and invites her on a science “expedition” to look for some lampreys, snake-eel creatures.
WARNING!!!!!
And next, my friends, is one of the most shocking scenes I’ve seen in my hundreds of viewed porn-torture and serial killer movies!
Explain the Ending and SPOILERS for What Lies Below
Here we go.
Mom isn’t feeling well so it’s just Libby and John in the boat. They are discussing her college and other boring teen stuff when we see…a trickle of blood on her seat. She got her period.
Suddenly, so fast you’re not sure you saw it, even though you know you did, his hand whips out and goes between her legs and under her skirt! With a…cloth? But then how did that wriggling black eel end up between her legs, too?!
THEN…he licks her blood off his fingers. OMGah!!!
Of course, she is completely mortified – and shocked. First of all, that he even knew she had it!! THEN, that he tried to “help” by going up there! He said, “Oh, so very sorry, I didn’t want you to get your skirt ruined.” And, “It’s science, no big deal. We’re both scientists, right?” Well, we all know “science” now, don’t we, after the Covid debacle.
The other huge shocking scene is the ending. Obviously, budget got in the way, because it is truncated, and, well, odd. Definitely claustrophobic. I’ll save details, but aliens is a good guess. I wish we could have seen more!!
Cuts
- Thank goodness Libby has a friend to complain to about her Mom and her new weirdo boyfriend. At one point she compares John to Donald Trump as someone who molests women. Wth? Obviously, she means Biden. 🙂
- Trey Tucker said in an interview that they filmed some scenes several times with Libby, trying different degrees of erotic intensity. Worked.
Other Audience Reviews (AND MORE SPOILERS!) of What Lies Below
Google: 1.4 stars
OMGah! That audience reaction is so terrible! I think they were offended? I know they didn’t understand the very obvious origins of John Smith. Describing the movie as Sci-Fi wasn’t enough of a hint?!
Only 4 paragraphs long. He call it “dire.” 🙂 He gave it one star, too!! Being English, he at least had the guts to mention the boat scene, which he calls a “mad scene.”
From “Roger Ebert.” He calls it “meandering and weirdly dour”.
YOU are weirdly dour, Roger. And dour doesn’t mean what you think it does.
And this: Libby finds “herself mysteriously drawn to beefy ecologist John Smith.” Mysteriously? Seriously, everyone can see he’s so hot.
Sadly, this is the worst review I’ve read on Roger Ebert – mainly because there are mistakes in the plot. “John is apparently peculiar, but he could always stand to be a little more off.” There are red flags right and left! Everytime he’s on screen! Creepy and threatening in every scene. More “off” than licking someone else’s blood? Changing shape? Smelling his own sweat?
And I just think that as a movie expert, “Roger” could have mentioned the obvious: that the reason the ending is so abrupt is probably because they ran out of money. Or is that too “insider”?
From Amazon:
3.8
~~ This is a Weird Flick, in a Good Way….
~~ TREY TUCKER…YES! That Ending, Though….NO! She liked the boat scene. Very much ((from a Vine Voice, so not to be totally trusted)
~~ Well, if their intent was to make ever inch of my body contort with creepiness vibes — they were successful!…It taps into those primal fears that most of us ladies don’t like to think about, being sexually targeted by a man we are suppose to be able to trust. He’s like the male version of siren, so beautiful and is leading us to our death.
That’s a Wrap
I was smitten. Good acting, erotic, out of this world, scary, pretty people…what more could you want? 4 out of 5 stars! But fix that ending!
What did you think?
Set painter in studio Art Depts. Member Scriptwriters Network, script analyst.
Author, 2 hardcopy books, Barnes & Noble Calendar.
- Emma in the Night ~ Wendy Walker ~ Thriller - May 11, 2023
- Still Alice (2014) ~ Psychology Movie Review ~ Julianne Moore - January 25, 2023
- The Other Emily ~ Dean Koontz - January 23, 2023
