‘Underwater’: Film Review

Before technology took over the movies, a cruddy sci-fi action thriller often looked just as bad as it played.

No longer.

Underwater,” a deep-sea knockoff of “Alien” set on a corporate research rig seven miles beneath the surface of the ocean, has been made with the kind of lavish atmospheric precision that, 30 years ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to find outside a movie directed by James Cameron.

Now, though, even a dregs-of-January throwaway will get slathered in the kind of grand-scale murk and logistical explosiveness that’s meant to excite us, even if the story it’s telling is rudderless junk.Well, guess what? It doesn’t excite us.

“Underwater” is a stupefying entertainment in whichThe film opens with its grabbiest visual effect, which is Kristen Stewart’s hair.

It’s been dyed a whiter shade of blonde and cropped so prison-camp short that it’s beyond anything

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