Water, They Thinking – The Underwater Realm Is a Nifty Pitch Reel.
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Earlier today, we saw a short that caught Guillermo del Toro’s eye and became a major motion picture. With The Underwater Realm, we have a series of shorts that clearly hopes to do likewise.
Loosely based around the concept of an Atlantis that reveals itself periodically to humans throughout history, it comes off as a mostly successful attempt to prove that the filmmakers, led my director David M. Reynolds, can handle any genre, from aerial combat movie to period naval adventure to modern-day found-footage horror. It mostly works, although in the fourth short, when a character shows up looking like Ben Stiller in a cheap Avatar costume, I couldn’t quite take it as seriously as I should.
It is impressive, however, that the shorts actually were shot underwater, with everyone in the cast holding their breaths for epic lengths of time (I was guessing they faked it on a soundstage a la Marv in Sin City, but not so). Technically, this is an impressive feat. Do these folks have as good a sense of storytelling? That I don’t yet know.
See for yourself here:
About The Author
Luke Y. Thompson has been writing professionally about movies and pop-culture since 1999, and has also been an actor in some extremely cheap culty and horror movies you will probably never hear much about (he is nonetheless mostly proud of them, as he met his wife on one). As editor of The Robot's Voice since 2012, he can take the blame for the majority of the site's content, all of which he creates because he loves you very, very much. (Although he loves nachos more. Sorry.) Prior to TRV, Luke wrote for publications that include the New Times LA, Los Angeles CityBeat, E! Online, OC Weekly, Geekweek, GeekChicDaily, The L.A. Times, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Nerdist