Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Maximilian Erlenwein
Starring: Sophie Lowe, Louisa Krause
Timing is everything in showbusiness, so pity the distributors of
Maximilian Erlenwein's tight survival horror
The Dive (a sunnier remake of Joachim Hedén’s snowy
Breaking Surface from 2020), which centres on a hapless
deep-sea diver trapped at the bottom of the ocean facing almost certain
death. It's a situation which is presently a little too close to home
perhaps, depicting circumstances which the collective mind has recoiled
from in recent months, and may therefore be difficult to recalibrate to,
and sell as, popcorn entertainment. Mind you, I suppose the Doomsday
Clock's tick closer towards midnight with Russia's March announcement of
plans to station nuclear weapons in Belarus hasn't harmed
Oppenheimer, and if we are all about to eat rats and piss in the street while our
E.T. dolls melt (ala Threads) then we might as well watch a gripping and effective oceanic thriller
in the meantime. Take our mind off it, like.
And in the context of free diving, too, timing is everything: the
ever-decreasing measures of oxygen levels, allowing 10 minutes for a
decompression break half-way between the 30 metres separating depth and
surface, knowing the precise ratio of air remaining to distance left.
Precision is key, so the last thing you want when going on a family dive
with your adult sister is for an avalanche of immutable rocks to trap you
on the seabed with just 25 minutes of air remaining. It doesn't help
matters that your sister isn't the most accomplished diver either, or also
that, as the genre seems to dictate these days, there is unresolved
familial trauma between the two of you - yikes! This is the situation May
(Louisa Krause - good) finds herself in, as
The Dive aligns us with her panicked kinswoman Drew (Sophie Lowe
- also good) and her attempts to keep her older sister alive and, somehow,
save her.
As an entry in the subgenre of people (usually women) stuck somewhere out
of the way, The Dive is a stomach-churning aquatic
counterpoint to last year's airborne
Fall
and shares that film's inventive manufacture of mini conflicts which keep
the narrative surging along. As she attempts to get help, dipping in and
out of the sea to retrieve more air for May and doing what she can with
the limited minutes on land, we see likeable Drew flummoxed by a locked
car (the keys and oxygen tanks were buried in the avalanche!), agonise in
split seconds over whether to take her sister air right now or push an
extra minute to attract the attention of a just-out-of-the-way fishing
boat, all the while nauseously suffering the bends. It's nail biting, and,
with The Dive substituting claustrophobia for
Fall's vertiginous terror, traumatising, too.
Perhaps The Dive has ingeniously tapped into an undiagnosed
phobia as, even during the first 10 minutes of the film, watching lithe
limbs squeeze through between heavy rocks, slipping into dark subterranean
caves, navigating the unforgiving murk of the ocean floor, I found the
film almost unbearable and came close to walking out! Erlenwein and
cinematographer Frank Griebe make the uneasy most of the
threateningly confined locations: upon the credits of the press screening
there was a rushed exodus from the screen, as the critic cognoscenti of
South Wales (a bunch of tough guys if ever there was) clamoured for space
and fresh air...
Personally, I could have done without the flashbacks to May's fatherly
trauma, and whatever the issue that she seems to antagonistically have
prior to the dive with Drew is (the film doesn't really explicate it, nor
seem that interested in the interpersonal conflict aside from vaguely
including it for the sake of form or as a holdover from the more detailed
backstory of Breaking Surface). This is a tactile film, which mercilessly taps into primitive,
immediate terrors. With its urgently convincing depiction of being trapped
underwater, and the submersive sensations it creates,
The Dive has more than enough sunken treasures for horror
fans.
The Dive is on Netflix UK/ROI now.
