Director: Steven C. Miller
MPAA Rating: NR
Run Time: 99 Minutes
While its trailer didn’t “wow” me, the newly released thriller Submerged had two other aspects that drew my attention and made me deem it worth a look.
First, the director – Steven C. Miller, who previously helmed the awesome action thriller The Aggression Scale – and second, the promise of a containment thriller, a subgenre that I always find myself gravitating toward for some reason. While not a complete letdown, the film makes for perfect VOD fodder; it’s entertaining enough but lacks any real tension, proving itself to be absent of any lasting power.
The film revolves around a group of friends out for a night on the town, being driven around in a fancy custom limo designed by Mario van Peebles, but when a kidnapping attempt is botched, the passengers all find themselves at the bottom of a canal and trapped in the car which is quickly becoming their tomb.
Miller transitions between the present, where everyone is trapped, and the past showing us the events that lead up to said limo tomb. These transitions are cleverly orchestrated and help pad the fairly simple premise…that is until the plot balloons out of control and becomes entirely too convoluted for its own good.
Tim Daly of Wings fame plays the father of one of the kids and the owner of the limo, who, after laying off a slew of his workers, becomes worried that threats on his life will eventually be targeted to his daughter. In addition to the tricked-out limo, he enlists the help of one of his longtime employees and bodyguards, Matt (Jonathan Bennett) to aid him in her protection.
Submerged is, at its core, an interesting concept for a film: a group of people must work together to figure out a way to escape a limo at the bottom of a canal before the tide carries them out to sea (assuming that’s a real thing that could occur).
Unfortunately, it becomes so bogged down with plot that the actual limo escape winds up playing second fiddle to the flashbacks, which do well in establishing the characters but ultimately results in a disconnect from what everyone really wants – to find out what these people are going to do in this situation. When it’s all said and done, the limo aspect is only a small portion of what’s going on in the narrative and by the end feels like a fairly pointless endeavor.
I still find Steven C. Miller’s directing to be on point, and I’ll continue looking forward to his next projects, but Submerged is entirely too earnest when neither the script nor the actors can effectively make this story something that can be taken seriously.
