TOP 10 HORROR MOVIES: This is our list of the best horror movies that take place underwater (or at least deal with the water somehow!). Forget about space being the final frontier, we know less about the depths of the oceans than we do about our moon!… What hideous monsters could be hiding in the deepest parts of the ocean?
The last frontier may not be space, but the deep blue sea. There are things we can’t even begin to understand in the deepest recesses of our oceans. And we are only just beginning to explore these areas… areas like the Challenger Deep which is the deepest known point of the Mariana Trench where The US has recorded depths of over 36,070 feet. There may be things that live in this intense pressure and dark that are unimaginable.
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Aquatic horror is a broad categorization that can include anything related to the water, and it’s also a subcategory often dominated by sharks. These ten aquatic horror movies take full advantage of the strange mysteries of the sea, and the disadvantages that it brings for its human characters. They elicit thrills and chills, while bringing something unique to the genre. These movies prove we need more like them. We narrowed down the entries on this list to films set exclusively under the sea. These films can include underwater facilities or boats/ships/submarines. Aquatic horror is not exactly a standout genre of horror classics, most on this list are cult films and have received a slating critically. There is a reason why they are few!
With so much of the world’s oceans still a mystery, there’s a vast wealth of potential waiting to be tapped.
Let’s dive in!
- Leviathan
Hired by Martin (Meg Foster), the head of a major corporation, a crew including geologist Steven Beck (Peter Weller) descends to the ocean’s depths for a mining project. When the undersea explorers find a sunken ship and investigate, they inadvertently bring a malevolent life form onboard their vessel. The creature kills some crew members and causes them to mutate, resulting in a battle for survival against an unknown force far below the surface of the ocean. This movie was the first film to be tapped as Alien underwater. While it wasn’t exactly the masterpiece of pacing, acting, and EFX that Ridley Scott’s Alien was, it is a pretty entertaining bit of silly fun. If you have a few hours to kill you could do far worse, plus there are quite a few similarities to another favorite, The Thing.
- Red Water
Lou Diamond Phillips plays the hero in this TV-movie about a bull shark finding its way into Louisiana’s rivers. His character is desperate for cash, which reunites him with his ex-wife, played by Kristy Swanson. As they search for sunken treasure, the bull shark rears its toothy head their way. Red Water managed to rake in high ratings for TBS, the cable network it originally aired on. While crudely made and by-the-numbers in many ways, it’s a watchable actioner with admirable shark animatronics effects.
- Shark Night
Sometimes a ‘bad’ movie has good things about it. That aptly describes Shark Night, a 2011 horror movie aimed at a young audience looking for cheap thrills and good-looking people being ravaged by killer fish. So long as one is okay with just that, Shark Night will provide some entertainment. What the movie lacks in sheer plausibility is made up for in non-stop excitement and better than average special effects. In Shark Night, college students spend the weekend at a cabin in the middle of a lake. Little do they know, the water is full of hungry sharks. How they got there, though, remains a mystery. For now.
- Sea Fever
The most recent release to the genre, Sea Fever is an unintentionally relevant entry to the genre that mirrors aspects of the current Covid 19 Pandemic. What starts out as a creature feature where a fishing trawler becomes entangled in strange tentacles, becomes a quarantine nightmare as a deadly and contagious parasite is realised upon the boat. Sea Fever is far more subtle and contained in its approach to horror than other entries on the list, but definitely one to check out for fans of slow burn and paranoia driven horror.
- She Creature
With creature effects by Stan Winston Studio, and Winston himself serving as producer, it’s a period horror film at sea about a killer mermaid. Rufus Sewell and Carla Gugino, two very underrated actors, feature as a husband and wife team looking to take a captured mermaid overseas to America. The mermaid turns out to be far deadlier than expected. The enclosed space of the ship is used well to heighten the tension and the creature effects are stellar for such a low budget film. Despite both Sewell and Gugino butchering the Irish accent, they both deliver strong performances in this little-known creature feature.
- Deep Blue Sea
You know what you don’t want to do? Make sharks smarter! That’s a lesson learned too late by Saffron Burrows’s doctor in this Renny Harlin-directed chum-fest as a search to find a cure for Alzheimer’s proves disastrous for the inhabitants of an underwater research facility. Outside of Jaws, the movie features the greatest death in the aquatic horror genre released in the 90s, which, even after 21 years, we have zero intention of spoiling here. On an island research facility, Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) is harvesting the brain tissue of DNA-altered sharks as a possible cure for Alzheimer’s disease. When the facility’s backers send an executive (Samuel L. Jackson) to investigate the experiments, a routine procedure goes awry and a shark starts attacking the researchers. Now, with sharks outnumbering their human captors, McAlester and her team must figure out a way to stop them from escaping to the ocean and breeding.
- Jaws
Really the granddaddy of them all when it comes to aquatic horror movies that audiences see being released today, Steven Spielberg’s game-changing shark movie is flawlessly gripping and more than capable of producing a good jump even in this day and age. On the hunt for a killer great white, a town falls to hysteria and three men embark on a foolhardy mission to kill it, evoking many classic stories and Hollywood techniques, showcasing the power of the less is more approach debatably better than any other movie in history.
- Underwater
For a fan of genre film, especially science fiction horror, Underwater delivers a fast-paced popcorn flick with some standout thrills and scares. Stewart shines as a lead protagonist, a woman of action that doesn’t shy away from moments of vulnerability. The aesthetic of the film is equally great with claustrophobic interiors and some of the best suit designs in any sci-fi film of recent years. Where the film falters is in a paper thin supporting cast that wastes many of these solid actors’ talents and borrows too liberally from the classics it takes inspiration from while offering little in its own voice.
- Beneath
In what is essentially a reimagining of “The Rift” segment from Creepshow 2, Beneath has several teens trapped on a boat as a large, carnivorous fish prowls the lake. The biggest complaint about this 2013 indie horror is the cast of loathsome characters. It’s nearly impossible to root for any of them. That being said, the movie comes up with an interesting conundrum that questions the bonds of friendship. In Beneath, the group of teens take a boat out on the water, despite one of them being warned not to. The caution isn’t unwarranted as a predatory fish haunts the lake. The only way of getting back to shore now is to lighten the load by whatever means necessary.
- Sphere
When psychologist Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman) wrote a report for the government on how to deal with extraterrestrial life forces, he didn’t expect his recommendations to be used. Now that a secret government agency is investigating what may be an alien spaceship that has been discovered partially buried on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, Norman finds that the plan he outlined is being put into effect and that the team he named in his report has been assembled. The ensemble psychological, sci-fi thriller is fantastic from top to bottom. The source material from Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name is easily one of his best. The cast is star-studded with Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, and Liev Schreiber to name just a few. This time the threat isn’t a sea creature, but aliens or something even weirder. There are sea snakes, killer jellyfish, massive bronze balls, and giant squids. What more could you want?
Bottom Line
With everything that is floating in the water, it makes you wonder why we all love to swim in it. New explorations and discoveries every day mean there is no shortage of material to haunt our underwater dreams. So, these were the top 10 underwater horror movies. What are your thoughts about it? Have you had a chance to see any of them? Let us know in the comments section below.
