Beneath Still Waters

Plot synopsis:
Two boys make a pact to do something brave, crazy and dangerous. They will see their town one last time before a man-made lake floods it forever, burying it under the deep lake. Everyones been evacuated just the church, the homes, the abandoned shops remain. Only the eerie buildings still hiding secrets that no one suspects.The two boys walk through the doomed ghost town. But the boys discover that the town isnt quite deserted. And they are trapped as a massive wall of water crashes down on the town.Time passes, and the whispered secrets of the town have been long forgotten. But now, fifty years after vanishing, the sunken town comes alive again. A boy vanishes swimming on a moonlit night while his girlfriend looks on. The very shoreline turns hungry, pulling people into the water. And belowbelow where it's incredibly cold and dark, the sunken town waits.Because Beneath Still Waters something ancient now stirs. A forgotten legend lives again. Half a century ago they thought they had buried this horror forever. But you cant kill what was never really alive. And the massive stone walls of the Dam must soon burst and what was an incredible myth, will become a deadly reality.

Tags: revenge

Review:
The police divers, with the support of the outsider photo journalist Dan Quarry (Michael McKell) that is filming the submerged Marienbad to write a matter about the town, try unsuccessfully to find the body.
When eerie things happen in the spot, Dan and the local journalist and daughter of the builder of the dam Teresa Borgia (Raquel Meroño) disclose dark secrets about Marienbad, Salas and his evil cult of the power of the flame.I am a big fan of Brian Yuzna, but "Beneath Still Waters" is a huge deception.
This tale about a journalist mother and daughter of the builder of the dam played by Raquel Meroño , her daughter performed by Charlotte Salt and a diver acted by Michael McKell , all of them are involved into a twisted as well as terrifying intrigue begins well and grows more and more until a downbeat finale .
Spanish secondary cast is pretty good but frankly wasted playing ridiculous roles , there appears notorious actors , such as Manuel Manquiña , Jose Maria Pou and Diana Peñalver who starred the Peter Jackson classic titled ¨Braindead¨.
There is a homage to Jacinto Molina when in the city of Marienbad before it floods , the boys throw rocks at posters for ¨Creature from the Black Lagoon¨ or ¨La Mujer y Monstruo¨ and "El Rostro de la Bestia," which has credits for Paul Naschy and Brian Yuzna ; there is no such movie, but Yuzna did direct Naschy in 'Rottweiler (2004)'.
Things aren't developed very good, the characters are not that interesting, the gore is there but it leaves much more to be desired, there's too little monster action, we've seen the ending hundreds of time before etc.
This movie is an insult to anyone who may have the misfortune to endure 92 minutes of unprofessional directing, poor special effects, poorer acting and an altogether mediocre performance and story line.
what could possibly go wrong?A great many things, apparently.The acting and dialogue are stilted, the atmosphere (which should just create itself, given the setting) simply isn't there, and the dreadful scene-chewing performance of Patrick Gordon as the villain of the piece deflates any sense of dread one may have had.
wow,this thing is really all over the place.sometimes the acting is not bad.at other times,it' not good at all.the dialogue ranges from decent to lame.sometimes there's just no context.the tone is a mess.i can't tell if it was supposed to be a thriller, or a black comedy,or a parody.sometimes this thing is just so over the top,it's ridiculous.then,all of a sudden it switches gears,and it seems like it's trying to be serious.there's really more than one movie here.i guess it was an entertaining mess,if nothing else.i give it a 2--no wait--a 6--i mean a 4--or maybe a 7.wait a minute.i'm all over the place.kinda like this movie.i can't give it a rating.i wouldn't know where to start..
After years producing and directing in the US, Brian Yuzna eventually left the States to set up shop in Spain; judging by the awful Beneath Still Waters, he's either been overdoing the Sangria or not taking enough siestas.
Whatever the reason, it's hard to believe that this mess was directed by the same guy that gave us the twisted classic Society and the delightfully gory Return Of The Living Dead 3.Yuzna's watery waste-of-time starts in the abandoned Spanish town of Marienbad, with two boys freeing Mordecai Salas, the leader of a Satanic cult, just as the area is about to be flooded by a new dam.
Forty years later, as the locals prepare to mark the anniversary of Desbaria, the town that was built to replace Marienbad, a series of strange deaths occur which suggest that Salas, trapped deep beneath the water for so long, is about to surface.
In order to save Desbaria, a photojournalist named Dan (Michael McKell), a TV news reporter, Teresa (Raquel Meroño), and her pretty daughter Clara (Charlotte Salt) must do battle with the supernatural forces that are intent on destroying the town.Featuring a European cast who, with the exception of a couple of Brits, struggle with the English dialogue, Beneath Still Waters is a badly scripted, poorly acted and dreary piece of nonsense that is enlivened occasionally by some fairly decent gore and loads of nudity.
Yuzna's direction is uninspired, there is far too much reliance on cheap digital effects during the many underwater scenes, and the story often makes little or no sense (eg.
why does Salas wait for forty years under the lake before emerging?).To be fair, Yuzna does manage one or two inspired moments—the best being the town's celebration, which turns into a debauched orgy—but with so much mundane drivel between the few high points, Beneath Still Waters deserves to sink without a trace..
Sets Up Well But The Wheels Fall Off. While nothing to rush out and buy, Brian Yuzna's 2005 film "Beneath Still Waters" is not nearly as bad as the negative comments would indicate.
It's a decent premise with quality production design, it puts most of its respectable budget on the screen, Charlotte Salt is very easy to look at, and it features the most effeminate looking warlock in cinema history for some needed (although probably unintentional) comedy relief.The negative reaction mostly comes from an extremely weak ending and a final moronic twist that takes about 10 IQ points off the target audience.
But compared to the staggeringly lame low budget garbage going direct to DVD these days "Beneath Still Waters" is a breathe of fresh air.Things set up nicely with an interesting flashback scene to 1965 when a damn project flooded a valley in Spain and submerged the village of Marinbad.
The reason for this is slowly revealed during the first half of the film as it is tied to a supernatural force which has caused several recent deaths in the town and appears to be structurally weakening the damn on the eve of the new village's 40th anniversary celebration.The last third of the film is like a bad remake of Jaws 3-D (1983), degenerating into a low budget disaster movie.
Maybe the negative aspects of the movie, makes the positive ones seem REALLY good and vice versa, but there was something that kept me watching this film.
I thought that it had to be some professional and experienced people that where part of the team behind this movie, since the sound, the directing and the effects where above average, but why would these people accept such terrible acting and bad storyline?
Or, to put it this way, how can a director that can direct and a good special effects team, settle for all this other crap that this movie contains?
Let this director, this composer and this special effects -team make a movie another time and hire new people fill in the rest of the staff!
"Beneath Still Waters" has an interesting premise, but fails miserably on all levels, making it in effect, terribly boring.
There after it gets worse for every minute.The actors are most likely better in an ordinary high schools drama class, than the ones they cast for this movie.
The children was alright though, but the adult actors.......The actions of the characters are so stupid that you think a 5 year old have scripted it.Well you can say it started so well and ended very bad.
A lot of potential in the story, but some rather poor director's work never made it come alive.The movie itself is enjoyable to watch, if you can punch through the Spanish actors struggling with their English, and the sometimes laughable B-movie effects (although in other places the effects are once again quite good).
The acting in many cases is amateuristic and very, very poor for all the people that are not main actors.Some good make-up and special effects are a plus again however, but overall it leaves much to be desired.
Brian Yuzna was already responsible for some really crazy and unusual horror projects in the past; some of them refreshing and original ("Society", "The Dentist") and other ones unspeakably terrible ("Rottweiler"), but "Beneath Still Waters" is undoubtedly the most discouraging effort he was ever involved in.
There are a lot of things going on in "Beneath Still Waters", but only very little of them make sense and it seems as if Yuzna doesn't want you to care about any of the characters and the grim ordeals they are facing.
So  what we have here is, without exaggerating, one of the most promising horror premises of the past two decades AND you can also add several dynamite sub themes like nudity, child-kill, underwater zombies and even a totally gratuitous orgy complete with nuns and chickens!
For the proper grim use of picturesque Spanish villages, please check out "Dagon" and "The Nun", which are both films Yuzna produced but not directed himself..
For a start it was directed by Brian Yuzna' part of the creative genius behind Re-Animator and director of horror masterpieces Society and Return of the Living Dead 3; and secondly, the plot; which is based on a book by Matthew Costello, sounded like a great base for a horror movie.
Someone or other has hatched a plan involving building a dam to flood the town and it's inhabitants; but the plan fails when a couple of no good kids end up freeing the cult leader before the town is engulfed in water.
Fast forward forty years and the village of Desbaria stands in its place; though the cult leader is waiting for his revenge.The film gets off to a really good start as we watch a couple of kids traverse across a flooded town and into a brilliantly realised Satanic church where they are greeted by a group of bewitched locals.
Anyone who has seen more than a few Brian Yuzna films will know that the director likes to let things descend into chaos so he can show a wave of graphic images; and that happens here, but it's not as good as it was in the likes of Society and really just caps off a very disappointing effort.
The acting was bad if they were even trying, the story was carbon copy: people stumble into evil and must stop it, and the action and horror was FEW and far between.
There was a time, after the excellent opening, that I was leaning more towards putting this film in the interesting, but deeply flawed category Rottweiler and Faust are in, but ultimately for me the good far outweighed the bad.
So it's up to a local TV reporter and out-of-town photographer to stop this evil from resurfacing.If it wasn't for the name Brian Yuzna being tagged to the project, I probably wouldn't have bothered.
The main problem with the Spanish production "Beneath Still Waters" is that the script is insipidly one-note and the ploddingly colourless screenplay (which is taken off Matthew Costello's novel) just doesn't know what its wants to be and goes in so many different directions without any sort of gelling chemistry.
BENEATH STILL WATERS suffers from a soggy script, poorly developed characters, situations that make no sense, and a story that becomes increasingly boring after a wonderfully creepy start.PATRICK GORDON is the restless demon at the bottom of a dam, seeking vengeance on the townspeople after decades of silence and the death of a small boy who was curious enough to free his binds.
The story jumps from that '65 incident to the present, with another death in the water prompting a diver/journalist by the name of Quarry (MICHAEL McKELL) to start an investigation of his own.Located in Spain, the film uses a mostly Spanish cast with lackluster results.
It is graphic, and there some scenes that may offend people, but for me this is a good, but not great horror movie.
Maybe the best acting was done by Charlotte Salt (Clara) and it shows moving further to major productions like Beowolf as Estrith.There's quite a amount of unexpected nudity in it, the first one you can see coming when you see her face, and yes, the blond one goes full frontal naked but it's again towards the end, the horror part, that a celebration turns out into a gang bang.
With Yuzna's move to Spain, his incredible talent has set the screen ablaze with some of the most astonishingly original works ever filmed.
With "Beneath Still Waters", Yuzna has created a unique and fantastic world unlike anything attempted by lesser directors (although Benicio del Toro has perhaps come closest with his failure, "Pan's Labyrinth").
I for one know what to expect from a Brian Yuzna-movie, and this time he delivers.
I'd say: if you enjoyed FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED, then you'll probably like BENEATH STILL WATERS too.
For those of you who have followed Brian Yuzna's work, you will know that he usually makes very low budget movies, so you expect that the special effects are not necessarily lifelike and more '80's horror' plastic looking, but once again, the movies were so addictive to watch, that it never really spoiled them one bit!
Indeed the Fear Factory movies he's made have slipped a bit, but on the other hand, a lot of his first works were originally taken from H.P.Lovecraft novels, (so just imagine quite what a task it would be to even try to beat those!) Although I must say that just before I had watched 'Beneath Still Waters' I'd just finished watching 'The Darkness' (which he produced).
This is simply a horrific film - not because it was a scary movie, but in how very truly bad it was in every department.Acting was mostly hammy, especially the Spanish cast.
The other cast interviews are really sad - all of them pretending they are in the best horror movie of all time.Worst scene of the movie: The extended orgy scene wins hands down, with the climatic re- animation of the drowned baddies (can't reveal more than this) coming a close second.The story itself is hardly original and is based on the novel by Matthew Costello.
However if the novel was a good one at all, the screenplay has certainly managed to mangle it.The only moment in the special effects department that lives up to schlock director, Brian - The Re-animator - Yuzna's reputation is a gleefully monstrous scene when the local constable is discovered hysterically self-dismembering!
The actors were horrible , special effects (what special effects?!), plot (i didn't realize this movie had one, it looked like a bunch of unorganized scenes to me) what i don't understand is how this movie ever got to a theater, there should be some sort of comity to prevent us from watching stupid useless movies like "Beneath still waters" .
Beneath Still Waters starts in 'Northern Spain 1965' as two young boys Teo & Luis trespass in a town that is being flooded by the creation of a dam, they run wild throughout it's streets but hear screaming coming from the local Church, upon investigation they find several people in the basement chained up including the evil dabbler in black magic Mordecai Salas (Patrick Gordon) whom Teo unwisely sets free as Teo is killed by Salas but Luis runs off...
Jump forward '40 Years Later' & photojournalist Dan Quarry (Michael McKell) wants to do a story on the now completely submerged town & the upcoming celebrations by the town that was built nearby in place of it, however the preparations for the celebrations aren't going too well as a boy named Antonio drowns in the lake created by the dam.
There is something alive & evil under the water still living in the submerged town & it's come back to claim the living...This Spanish production was produced & directed by Brian Yuzna who was once a great maker of genre films but he has definitely lost his touch with his last two Spanish films, this & the equally disappointing Rottweiler (2004).
The script by Mike Hostench & Angel Sala was based on a novel by Matthew Costello & one has to say it's a bit of a mess which is a shame because the basic story of a ghostly underwater town is something different & had lots of potential but sadly this is what we ended up with.
The character's are dull & clichéd, a journalist, a bratty teenage kid, a TV news reporter, the guy who knows everything & tries to warn everyone but no one will believe him, the police captain with a bad attitude, the local mayor who doesn't care about an impending disaster but only about his towns celebrations & a dull villain who gets to walk around in a black suit & look menacing yet without actually doing much.
One more thing, what was up with the dude who had the slug crawling down his forehead & a goldfish bowl full of maggots?Dirctor Yuzna is losing it, Beneath Still Waters feels like a dour made-for-TV film at times with dull cinematography & bland Spanish locations.
The acting isn't great.Beneath Still Waters is a pretty poor film, it had potential & an original & intriguing premise but it makes nothing of it.
Two young boys go to pay one last visit to a town before it is sank beneath water so a dam can be built, but they stumble across a strange ritual and one of them is killed.
"Beneath still waters" is'nt comparable to some of the masterpieces in which Yuzna has been involved as a director ("Society") or producer ("Re-animator").
The "current" story starts with a TV reporter and a photojournalist (working on spec) covering the 40th anniversary of the completion of the dam that caused waters to inundate the abandoned town.The mayor of the town wants to use the 40th anniversary as a means to attract tourists, and sets a celebratory party for a few days after the action opens.
And, I can not understand why Yuzna just won't make a Spanish horror film using the language of the cast.