a review of 深宅

TheQuietGamer
TheQuietGamer @TheQuietGamer
深宅 - 评论

Massively underrated. I get that it uses a lot of found-footage clichés, a subgenre of horror that the industry became way too oversaturated with during the 2000s, but I feel like people are letting that get in the way of being able to appreciate the novelty of the setting. In a similar manner to The Blair Witch Project, the terror these characters are facing doesn't just stem from the inexplicable occurrences happening around them, but the dangers inherent to the natural environment they find themselves trapped in as well. Only instead of getting lost in the woods, the YouTuber couple protagonists are contending with stuff such as a rapidly dwindling oxygen supply while locked in a (haunted) house that's submerged at the bottom of a lake. The aquatic abode even does quite a bit to make the film's ghastly antagonists more interesting. As a guy with thalassophobia and ichthyophobia (among countless other water-related phobias) I was more freaked out by the shots of the leads swimming with actual fish than I was any of the supernatural moments, yet the sight of the reanimated dead floating towards a potential victim with their arms outstretched and hair drifting about is unexpectedly eerie. A good thing too as otherwise they probably would have been rather unmemorable thanks to the fairly generic satanic cult plot. That's not to say the writing is all bad. The script actually has some really cool set pieces and the whole shebang is carried by a Paranormal Activity-esque (the first one) dynamic between its two scuba divers where a girl is pulled into increasingly life-threatening situations by a boyfriend who desperately wants to catch something on camera that will bring him that ellusive internet fame no matter the cost. It speaks to this era of social media stars going to ridiculous extremes for "clout," and to a lesser degree toxic relationships also. You may think all assembling a bunch of familiar tropes and placing them underwater would be good for is giving us a sunken, sodden corpse of a movie to look at, however you'd be mistaken. On the contrary, they unexpectedly sprouted gills and took on a new life here. Not to the point where the feel completely fresh again, but enough so that they're genuinely the most exciting they've been in years. To quote a very wise crustacean, "Darling it's better, down where it's wetter.”