★★½
“Becalmed”
My heart sank in the first few seconds, when I discovered that this was a SyFy Original Movie. The really poor CGI, of a ship sailing on the ocean, seemed to confirm that I was in for one of their bottom of the barrel productions. In the end, however, this was… just about okay. Incredibly derivative, to be sure, and that’s not its only problem. Yet it still just about sustained my interest. That’s certainly not always the case for SyFy Original Movies, to put it mildly.
This takes place almost entirely on the not-so-good ship Amphitrite, an eco-warrior vessel engaged in tracking illegal Chinese trawlers. Its engine breaks down, right in the path of an incoming storm. They then pick up a survivor out of the water, who turns out to be infected with… something. Which is why he’s telling the crew, “Kill me… Then kill yourselves.” Needless to say, they don’t quite follow his suggestion. Before you can say “Alien rip-off“, they’re moving slowly around the dimly-lit corridors of the ship in search of… something. And before you can say “Thing rip-off,” they’re watching video off the survivor’s phone, and getting paranoid about who among them might, or might not, be infected.
It’s an all-female crew, which is why the film is here, and it’s admirable that no-one explicitly mentions this or makes a fuss about it. They are what they are, seven women who are competent at their jobs – and of course, it’s a reflection of the all-male cast in John Carpenter’s The Thing. The problem is that there isn’t enough effort put into differentiating them, or establishing them as individuals. I’m not certain I could tell you most of their names, or identify them even with a particular characteristic. I’m going to guess the one called “Sparks” was the ship’s engineer. Otherwise, they seemed entirely interchangeable.
The other problem was already mentioned in passing: the remarkable lack of lighting. Look, I get that the ship “lost power”. I understand that your creature budget of 15 South African Rand probably can’t stand up to the harsh glare of daylight. But there is a limit to how much sloth-like meandering along corridors by near-candlelight I can tolerate. And this film reaches that quota inside the first 30 minutes, then keeps right on meandering. Inevitably, the dwindling band of survivors eventually igure out what exactly they are going to do, and how they are going to stop the creature from reaching the all-you-can-infect buffet which is civilization. To the movie’s credit, it doesn’t shy away from the downbeat conclusion of The Thing, though as appears inevitable with SyFy Original Movies, there’s a coda which leaves the door open to a sequel no-one wants or needs.
In the end, the problem is as always: if you steal from the best, you’ll be compared to the best. And Dead in the Water comes up short of The Thing and Alien, by the width of several oceans.
Dir: Sheldon Wilson
Star: Nikohl Boosheri, Christia Visser, Tanya Van Geaan, Bianca Simone Mannie