Writer(s): Eskandari, and Michael Hultquist
Starring: Nora-Jane Noone, Alexandra Park, Diane Farr, and Tobin Bell
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| There's seriously more drama in this poster than there is the entire movie. |
We were actually, legitimately excited
to see 12 Feet Deep, for a number of reasons, and all of them point
to an anti-MarVista MarVista movie: 1.) The trailer gives nothing
away, unlike most of their thriller previews which literally give
away even the twist; 2.) the trailer is professionally edited, and
the movie professionally shot, making it look like a legitimate
movie; 3.) the plot breaks away from obsessed students and teachers
to deliver an intriguing premise that’s way outside of their norm.
Would we be rewarded for our sense of adventure, or punished because
of it?
It didn’t take long to realize that a
MarVista movie is a MarVista movie, no matter how flashy or
professional the trailer is.
Bree and Jonna are two sisters who,
through a pretty much completely impossible and stupid event, become
trapped underneath the fiberglass cover of an Olympic-size public
pool, trying to get an engagement ring that fell in. No problem,
you’re thinking, all they have to do is wait until morning and
they’re golden, right? Wrong! It happens to be a holiday weekend,
as we are informed thanks to a typed up notice that the pool's owners
tack to a bulletin board about an hour before they close, so they are
forced to survive under the cover for three whole nights.
As intrigued as I was by the trailer,
and as disturbing as the idea of being trapped under a cover would
be, it took me but five minutes to realize that, if it’s anything
like it’s pictured here, it would actually be pretty boring. After
all, this being a public pool means that there are no terrifying
creatures lurking within, and there’s the benefit of a shallow end,
two things that pretty much negate the potential for any “natural”
scares. (Claustrophobia could have made things interesting, and would
be an actual concern for people trapped in real life, but neither of
our heroines seem to suffer from it.)
Even the writers realized how boring
and thin the foundation for this story was, so in order to inject as
much tension as possible, and to provide a little “story” with
which they could hang a formula around, there are some other elements
at work here: Jonna is a recovering drug addict who may or may not
still be using; Bree is a diabetic that must rely on insulin shots to
keep her blood sugar regulated; and Clara is the pool janitor, fired
that day but allowed to work out her scheduled shift (alone, oddly)
who has a personal vendetta against the world…naturally, once she
discovers there are two people trapped in her pool, she finds the
perfect guinea pigs to take out her frustrations upon.
Unfortunately, none of it works,
because it all just feels like a movie straining to make up
for an ill-advised plot: any time you rely entirely on a series of
health problems and coincidences to drag the story along, you're
putting a lot of faith in your audience to just go along with it, and
there are only so many things the audience can forgive before it all
becomes laughably obvious. Take, for instance, Bree's diabetes
symptoms, which seem to come and go simply to fit the dramatic needs
of the screenplay. Movie running out of excitement? Oh no, her blood
sugar’s so low that she’s nearly unconscious, with no possible
treatment options within reach! Writers write themselves into a
corner? Whoops, nevermind! Now she's perfectly healthy and functional
in the next scene, just in time to give her pitiful, whiny sister a
reassuring pep talk about how no one thinks she's a fuck-up and how
she's a great and wonderful person that the world would miss if she
were gone (all lies, by the way).
Ditto goes for Clara, the fired janitor
who switches back and forth from psychopathic aggressor, to being
stabbed in the ear by a sharp piece of shrapnel, to a misunderstood
victim. As it turns out, she's not a bad person, just a victim of
circumstance, much like her two trapped guinea pigs, a shared notion
that gives them all something to bond over, and that brings the story to a simplified, "happy" ending that just as easily could have occurred much quicker to save everyone the hassle of trying to stay awake for 90 minutes.
Honestly, there's not all that much to
say about 12 Feet Deep, because there's not really much of note that
happens. And most of that boils down to the entire project being a
failure from conception, centering its story around a mostly boring
non-event, and then cramming in as many coincidental moments as
possible in an effort to create enough artificial tension to carry it
along to the finish line; a finish line that isn't at all worth the
time and patience involved in making it that far.
The lead actresses--although playing
poorly-written, overly annoying characters—are better than the
material deserves, and the movie is shot competently; it's also at
least a change from the typical MarVista thriller, which typically
involve some kind of weird obsession or love triangle. Other than
that, there's really no reason to even acknowledge its existence.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- Aren't pool drains typically in the center of a pool? So then how does the pool operator not notice two grown women swimming in it when he takes one final glance before closing the pool cover?
- I hate both of these girls. Could they both just die?
- All Clara has to do to stop the video cameras from recording is turn off the monitor, a method that would defeat the entire purpose of having a camera system and that works in direct contradiction to every single video monitoring system ever.
- How do these characters constantly lose sight each other, despite being confined to the wide-open expanse of a pool?
- One character's advice after Clara turns on the jets to fill up the pool with more water is to “block the jets!”, a very logical fight-or-flight response given the dozens of jets spread across an entire pool's length and their confinement to a 5 ft. frame and four limbs.
- Being a former junkie, you would think Jonna would have much better negotiation/bargaining skills than she does.
RATING: 3/10
TRAILER
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