Below (film)

Below
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Twohy
Produced by	Darren Aronofsky Sue Baden-Powell Eric Watson
Written by	Lucas Sussman Darren Aronofsky David Twohy
Starring	Bruce Greenwood Matthew Davis Olivia Williams Holt McCallany Scott Foley Zach Galifianakis Jason Flemyng Dexter Fletcher
Music by	Graeme Revell Tim Simonec
Cinematography	Ian Wilson
Editing by	Martin Hunter
Studio	Dimension Films
Distributed by	Miramax Films Dimension Films
Release date(s)	October 11, 2002 (2002-10-11)
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$605,562

Below is a 2002 World War II horror film directed by David Twohy. It was written by Lucas Sussman, Darren Aronofsky and David Twohy, and stars Bruce Greenwood, Olivia Williams, Matthew Davis, Holt McCallany, Scott Foley, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher.

It was filmed on location in Lake Michigan (for exteriors, using the World War II-era U.S. Navy submarine, USS Silversides) and at Pinewood Studios.

Plot

The USS Tiger Shark is a submarine on patrol in the Atlantic Ocean in 1943. The submarine is ordered to pick up survivors spotted adrift by a British PBY Catalina patrol plane. At the wreck site, they retrieve three survivors — a British nurse and two sailors, one wounded — from a British hospital ship that was torpedoed several days earlier. As they pick up the survivors the Tiger Shark spots a German warship bearing down on them. The submarine has several encounters with the German warship and suffers heavy damage from depth charges in the process.

Immediately after the first attack the Commanding Officer of the Tiger Shark, Lieutenant Brice (Bruce Greenwood), discovers that the wounded sailor is actually a German POW, Luftwaffe pilot and family man Ben Archerlift. Brice confronts him because he thinks Archerlift has been making strange noises to betray their position to the German warship. Brice believes it was an act of sabotage, and shoots Archerlift dead when the German panics and grabs a scalpel to defend himself. The crew experiences eerie phenomena seemingly related to the recent death of the previous captain, Lieutenant Commander Winters. According to Brice, Winters was killed trying to obtain a souvenir from a torpedoed German ship; he fell and hit his head while reaching for his souvenir, then drowned before he could be rescued.

Disembodied voices are heard, a series of mechanical problems keeps the submarine turning back towards the site of the sunken German ship, and crewmen are accidentally killed at an alarming rate, including the British nurse and sailor, and one of the junior officers on the Tiger Shark. They begin to suspect a supernatural influence. They also begin to question Brice's version of how and why Captain Winters died.

It is revealed that Brice and two other senior officers were responsible for the death of Captain Winters, and that the British hospital ship was mistaken for a German ship and was sunk by the Tiger Shark. The three officers could not afford this blot on their records and conspired to suppress the story, killing Captain Winters as he tried to save the wounded in the ocean to make up for his and his crew's drastic mistake. This is discovered after one of the senior officers is mysteriously killed while working on the exterior of the sub, and the other drowns after trying to escape the boat after seeing Winters' ghost.

The boat is ultimately crippled by the mounting accidents, and only five crew members remain alive: Brice, Odell, Claire, Stumbo, and eccentric crewman "Weird" Wally. Brice and Claire face each other down on the surface deck of the disabled submarine. Claire has spotted another ship in the area and tries to get its attention, but Brice holds her at gunpoint. His remorse over the accident overcomes him, and he shoots himself in the head, falling dead into the ocean. The four survivors are picked up by ship spotted by Claire, which turns out to be British. The Tiger Shark sinks away from the surface, coming to rest on the ocean floor next to the British hospital ship.

Cast

• Bruce Greenwood as Lieutenant Brice
• Matthew Davis as Ensign Douglas Odell
• Olivia Williams as Claire Paige
• Holt McCallany as Lieutenant Paul Loomis
• Scott Foley as Lieutenant Steven Coors
• Zach Galifianakis as Weird Wally
• Jason Flemyng as Stumbo
• Dexter Fletcher as Kingsley
• Nick Chinlund as Chief
• Andrew Howard as Hoag
• Christopher Fairbank as Pappy

Production

The producers used the USS Silversides (SS-236), a World War II-era Gato-class submarine based in Muskegon, Michigan, for exteriors of the "USS Tiger Shark." The sub was towed out into Lake Michigan.

Matthew Leitch and Dexter Fletcher appeared together in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, where their characters were also under the command of an officer named Winters.

Reception

The film gained an approval rating of 63% on Rotten Tomatoes with 41 out of 65 reviews calling it fresh. Reviewers on Metacritic gave a mixed response with a 55% approval rating based on 20 reviews. Below also gained mixed reviews in the press. Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+ rating, calling it a "handsome, haunting submarine thriller". Edward Guthmann from the San Francisco Chronicle gave a mainly negative review stating that the dialogue was "heavy on sarcasm and puncturing insults, never captures the World War II period but sounds ridiculously anachronistic". Variety Magazine gave the movie a mixed review stating that "the strenuous seriousness the film applies to an idea that is finally silly at its core steadily increases the impression of overwrought artificiality as matters progress".

Films of similar theme

Some films that possess the same war/horror genre are listed below:

• The Keep (1983) by Michael Mann, about a group of German soldiers fighting a demon in World War II-era Romania.
• The Bunker (2001) by Rob Green, about a group of German soldiers hiding in a bunker from the American enemy.
• Deathwatch (2002) a British film set in World War I about a group of British soldiers who capture an abandoned German trench where supernatural forces start killing them.
• Dog Soldiers (2002) by Neil Marshall, about a group of soldiers ending up fighting werewolves during a routine exercise.
• R-Point (2004) Korean horror film about a group of soldiers sent to investigate the disappearance of another unit.
• The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) Directed by Martin Weisz, a group of National Guard soldiers in training get attacked by Mutants hiding in Mine Shafts on a Top Secret Military Base.
• Outpost (2008) British horror film about a group of mercenaries in war torn Eastern Europe who find a World War II German bunker haunted by Nazi ghosts.
• The Guard Post (2008) Korean horror film from the same director as R-Point about a group of soldiers sent to investigate a border post where the soldiers manning it have killed each other due to a mysterious virus.
• The Objective (2008) Directed by Daniel Myrick, A CIA agent accompanied by U.S. Special Forces search for an Afghan Cleric encounter supernatural forces.
• Red Sands (2009) by Alex Turner, about a squad of U.S. soldiers on assignment in Afghanistan that gets isolated and the soldiers kill each other one by one while being haunted by a djinn.

External links

• Below at the Internet Movie Database
• Below review at RogerEbert.com
• Below at AllRovi