such a missed opportunity. you managed to get that in your movie, but no characters... that's my conclusion when thinking about how good this movie appeared - in set design, costumes, visual effects, cast etc. regarding plot, writing, editing, all crucial storytelling components are basically absent. the first act is simply missing, we're out directly into the mid-movie/third act turn with a "nail-biting" trolley-problem dilemma, within the first 10mins. this all means nothing to the viewer who has not even been introduced to these non-characters. (i'm talking about literally faceless victims, seen only in the distance, although we'll get to the cast later...) anything good here is essentially lifted from somewhere better, not remixed or reguvenated. maybe they put the beginning/ending narration lines in when realising that their movie had nothing of substance in it, during post-production. occasionally, predictable character interactions are metered out. ones that you've seen so often, done better. you end up more likely to dislike these people after each subsequent scene. they're not even dislikable (although everybody seems to find tj miller intolerable for some reason,) the lifeless script just disabuses the audience. characters feel like shells, waiting for subsequent drafts to flesh them out. lacking any build or interesting dynamics. some of the scares are suitably unsettling but most of it just feels forgone; with every other scene being mediocre exposition. the impact of these scenes is depleted before takeoff. there's some neat action and great looking underwater effects, including the foe(s). however, too much of it is trying to emulate a hand-held camera which feels wrong when the viscosity of water simply doesn't allow that kind of movement. nor does it engender coherent action choreography. there are moments where this choice actually shines, but they are rare. tbh, i'm just glad that they didn't stoop to using tacky "monster-vision" or whatever. another reason that the action feels bereft is the lacking sense of world-building or geography, we never get the feeling that this is really the deepest area of ocean or any differences in technical difficulties experienced by the crew. this could have been anywhere underwater (may as-well go for the badarse trench name-drop.) we get some sense of the high pressure, but we don't really understand anything about the stations, why there are so many defunct ones, or what the normal function of anything is besides the elevator. extended (optional) rant: there could have been some cool situations thought up whereby the station, gear or crew is tested in creative and tense ways, but it all fits the pedestrian mold - "monster break stuff, run" (also totally fine if your movie has other things to engage the audience with). one example where they attempted to do this sort of thing, was a scene involving some found food packets floating in water. even though they were in the middle of a giant empty tunnel, where nobody would store their food. "oh my god, it's food"- really, you're as perplexed as me to find this here? obviously they're trying to do an emotional moment here, but when your crew saw massive losses in the past hour and this is the dialog? like "yeah, no shit, people used to live here*, that was only hours ago..." *(who is living in this darn tunnel?!) more to the point, regarding geography, how did the tunnel flood only-partially when there is so much pressure?! /endrant but do not fear, the bizarre editing will swoop in, inexplicably fade out when things were getting intense, do a time jump, and move on to the next scene. i can see a couple reasons why this might have been done, despite it honestly feeling like the scene is just missing when it happens, but it's hard to forgive when you're already having so much trouble becoming invested. considering the aforementioned, i'd be interested to know actually how much footage they had to work with. however, considering that the effects sequences were as involved (and often pseudo-single-take) as they were, it wouldn't surprise me if they had difficulties editing the movie at all - after it passed storyboarding. but it was almost cool! if it weren't as empty as that trench.