User reviews

Apparently this was made for $4 million which whilst is a heck of an achievement did hinder it somewhat. The basis for the story is good and lends itself a lot to 'The Thing' in many respects but could have been fleshed out a little more. Probably the biggest grievance I had is the editing, it really needed a lot more work & professionalism in places as one scene would jump to another and you'd be left confused as to what had actually happened. Minor niggles would be the subtitling (I don't speak Russian) which lost a little in translation, the lighting in some scenes which was just too dark and some plot elements (a trained scientist walking unprotected into a room which is clearly a biological hazard?) we're just dumb. With a bit more time and money it would have earned a 7 out of 10 from me.

When I read the synopsis for this 2020 movie titled "Superdeep" (aka "Kolskaya sverhglubokaya"), I must admit that I was immediately interested, as the movie sounds rather interesting. So as I had the chance to sit down to watch "Superdeep" here in 2021, of course I did so.

I must say that "Superdeep" is a movie that will find some appeal to fans of John Carpenter's "The Thing", as there are some interesting similarities between the two movies.

However, "Superdeep" just doesn't really match "The Thing" in terms of intensity or entertainment value. Now, don't get me wrong here, because "Superdeep" is definitely a watchable movie, but writer and director Arseny Syuhin just didn't have the same ability as John Carpenter to make this into an equally entertaining and disturbing movie.

What "Superdeep" was lacking was that sense of isolation, hopelessness and cosmic dread that "The Thing" had to it, and it was showing on the screen. Sure, I managed to sit through the entire movie, but I was only adequately entertained. However, "Superdeep" is not a movie that warrants a second viewing, as it just didn't have the contents to its storyline for more than a single viewing.

The acting in the movie were good, and it was rather nice to get to sit down and watch a movie like this without having familiar faces on the screen.

Something that was holding the movie back was the fact that it was a rather generic, linear and predictable movie. Writer and director Arseny Syuhin just didn't throw any curveballs to the audience along the way, much to a greater disappointment actually.

"Superdeep" is definitely winning points on its special effect and visual effects. The creature design was rather interesting, and the scenes where the people finally give into the spores is just amazing. Those scenes by themselves makes it well worth sitting down to watch "Superdeep".

Ultimately, while "Superdeep" was watchable, it was just not a memorable or outstanding sci-fi horror experience. It was a shame, though, because there definitely was a lot of untapped potential here in the movie.

My rating of the 2020 movie "Superdeep" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.

Review based on the english dubbed version on Shudder.

Hard to judge this film properly given how bad the dubbed dialogue was. Terrible, at times nonsensical, dialogue all delivered by pretty bad, generic voice actors for all of the supporting cast.

That along with that the editing isn't great. Lots of odd pauses and scenes shot with someone talking off screen or the back of somebody's head, I guess to hide some dubbed dialogue. Then some scenes drag on for ages, how many shots of the helicopter flying over the sea do we need to see in one sequence, while at other times it seems like you've skipped a scene.

The effects are fine for the budget, you can see that fur parker hoods don't work with the green screen and when the helicopter lands in the snow it manages not to disturb any snow at all, but you can forgive things like that if the film is involving.

I just found it all quite dull and distracting, lots of comparisons to John Carpenters The Thing but that seems more like marketing to get you to watch it.

I've always generally liked Russian SF both in book and movie form. Tarkovsky's Stalker and of course Solaris come to mind. Even the recent Sputnik was interesting though flawed but The Superdeep got me wanting to jump into the film and slap around a few characters more than once.

It's that kind of bad slasher movie writing where characters who should know better constantly do things that make no sense whatsoever and in this case they're very dramatic about it in that stoic Russian manner.

The sets were great, the special make up effects were very good. It's worth watching but you might want to consider a tranquilizer.

And btw, the Kola borehole is about 8 inches in diameter. It's literally a smallish hole drilled into the earth.

Just watch Blomkamp´s Zygote on Youtube instead. Same thing without the filler, and the monster is way creepier.

An ambitious Russian horror film that borrows liberally from a number of films including Carpenter's 'The Thing,' and 'The Descent.' The plot, about bad things happening at a lab deep in the earth, is muddled and often confusing and takes too long to get going. The English dub isn't great. Worth a watch if you're not expecting much.

The movie does take its sweet time - if you excuse the pun. But once it gets going ... well it is what you could hope for, for a low budget horror movie. Although I'm not even sure how low budget this was. But I think it is safe to assume it wasn't anywhere near any Hollywood horror movie blockbuster money they had to their disposal - not just because this is Russian.

So if you got through the slow first part of the movie, that sets up the rest of it ... congratulations! You have to have a love for horror and creature features to be honest - but why else would you be here if that wasn't true?

Yes, The Superdeep is no masterpiece but the rather low rating has something to do with the fact that this is a Russian movie (at least my guess). What we get is some nice story with a solid production and acting, and some fine visuals here and there spiced up with a little hunch of horror. Of course, we all know too well the ingredients the story of The Superdeep is cooked up: The Thing and Alien may be mentioned here.

There are some logical issues (why the members of the expedition don't wear the full protection suits and gears all the time in the hot zone for example just can be explained by a mystic of higher rank) but I know a lot of movies published by Hollywoods greatest companies, or Netflix, Marvel and whoever, that got far far bigger holes in the plot - and better ratings. Anyway, if you like this kind of movies The Superdeep will deliver a nice snack. Solid to good.

If it weren't for the main character being attractive and seeing her strip down a bit at the ending, this would have gotten 1 star. The movie is horrible and shutters synapses is completely wrong. They try to drag you in with the interesting topic we all came across on YouTube a while back "hearing" the voices from hell from the deepest hole even drilled. This movie is completely irrelevant from that... I was very excited at first after reading but I waited and waited and boom nothing close to relate it. How can you base a movie on something and not include that something in the film?

The Russians have been putting out some pretty decent movies lately, really enjoyed sputnik and this one is pretty good too.

Yes its a sort of THE THING movie, but its well made and if i recall in The thing the plot was almost none existing too.

The special effects for this movie are amazing, the acting is not that bad.

If you like movies like The thing i highly recommend this movie.

This film is similar to the american one called The thing and the effects are like that movie as well. The plot is different but interesting and keeps the spectator compenetrated in the movie. The cast is pretty all unknown, some good acting and some not and the ambience is well made. If you love science fiction as I do, then watch it.

The idea of the film was clearly developed by throwing the scripts of The Thing, DOOM, Resident Evil films, and the visual style of the Resident Evil VII game into a randomizer and then used to re-build the story of Underwater (2020).

The premise is very simple, but there is no story to build up onto it. This film packs quite a run-time, but absolutely nothing of interest happens. There is no sense of pacing or progression since we are never made aware of the clear goal the team is trying to pursue (opposing to what they literally did in the first RE film).

The film starts with a randomly disconnected flashback that is supposed to establish our main lead as an unethical scientist. This comes back (again, randomly) several times in the film and is not directly connected to anything else. I suspect that this was supposed to indicate that in the ending she reassessed her beliefs, but you can't be 100% sure about anything in the film.

They seemed to have an interesting location that was never made good use of. We can see some cool shots of the exteriors but shots with the 'actors' are clearly just bad green screen. Also, the whole Russian late 80ties setting is never made good use of besides one guy having a relevant hairstyle. The lab looks as generic as possible, and even though the film doesn't look low-budget, they clearly did not use the money in a good way.

It is not trivial to understand what is supposed to be going on, but after around 1 hour of the film, one might start to suspect that the team has a mission to get inside the lab, get some samples of the evil fungus, and evacuate. The editing is all over the place, so we get lots of long unnecessary scenes while the required establishing ones are missing. The best character in the film was the elevator since quite a lot happened to it, it was functional, then it got planted with a bomb, then malfunctioning, then working again, I honestly have no idea what was supposed to be going on since I was mostly confused through the viewing.

The dialogue is a random mess that makes absolutely no sense. Most of the time the 'actors' spit out disconnected trailer quotes. I'm fluent in Russian, so I had the real pleasure of laughing off some dialogue since it feels like it was written in English and then machine-translated back to Russian. The writers clearly had no idea how real people are supposed to talk.

Since there is no story or progression, there is no acting in this as well. The main lead is as wooden as, pretty much, everyone else, besides the younger scientist guy, who was not only a good authentic cast but also tried to act for some reason. The funniest one was the engineer guy, who looked like a generic early 2000 bully and acted accordingly, CLEARLY THE BEST DEPICTION OF A SECRET LAB ENGINEER IN THE CRUMBLING USSR. There were no interactions between the 'characters', hell, it's hard to even distinguish them from one another. I can recall the faces of most of the first RE film special ops, but I can't remember anything about these 'characters' even though I just watched the film. The whole characterization of the main female lead was the fact that he had a strong eastern European accent (which made her lines in Russian much funnier than they needed to be).

The 'characters' act like they know much more than the viewer, so they slowly do some things for some reason, and then the film is over.

Overall, I can't even call this a film. I gave it 2 out of 10. The first star goes to the younger scientist man, who looked authentic and for some reason tried to act. The second one goes to the practical effects team, they were obviously given the task to implement the ripped off effects of the REVII game and The Thing, and they managed this quite well, although some of the puppets' shots were heavily butchered by the horrible directing and editing.

No kidding, this movie is a real horror. But in the bad way. Stupid scenario, plot holes, weak directing and poor cast will steal your time away. Forever!

This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. If you can call this a movie I have seen adult movies that had a better story than this piece of garbage. Plot is non exiting literally.

This WRECKAGE of a movie could of been shortened to 40 minutes long, and still not be any different than the nearly 2 hour spectacle I just endured. I can't recall any other movie that has had so much empty space in it!! The sheer amount of time these people have managed to waste is impressive.... in the worst way possible way.

Once again, another new sci-fi movie that started out very promising.. then suddenly, as though it was hit in the brain by a speeding bus.... BOOM!!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!!

And as the final slap in the face, they managed to get the female lead character to shed clothing for no logical reason except to hold our attention for the last 20 minutes. This is now the go-to band aid for trash movies, and the Russians are even starting to do it now. The following is my interpretation of a conversation that must of taken place between the producers... Ivan: ''Hello comrade Vladimir. I fear that this movieflim production has become... how to say.... uhhh very long... muchitlno dolgo, da?'' Vladimir: "Da. Da. Yah songlassen? A vaii, Katya?'' Katherine: ''Yes ahh me too. Duomayiu. What shall we do to correct this prroblyem?'' Ivan: ''Well, let us first take drinks of aa vwodka and ideas may come? Da?'' .... pours a round of vodka... ''vash dorroveay to Putin!'' (others): Da da to Putin. Putin.'' ....then pours a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh round... 3 hours later after a Russian polska dance and a can of potted meat.... Ivan: ''Ah huh!! Comrades i have found the solution to our problem! Instead of cutting out the many scenes of wasted time where nobody does anything, we keep all movie the same, but we will tell lead girl to take her pants off for the rest of the film!'' (others): ''Da da brilliant! Very good! Da da da.''

The setting is a great place for a horror film with the real life stories that emerged from the borehole. Its debated whether the recording of voices is real or not, but with the Russians, its hard to tell facts from fiction. Anyway the movie keeps a good pace. Standard horror movie idiot characters of course. If they had expanded a bit of the plot it would have rounded this film out nicely. Felt the story was a bit rushed. Decent film though. Deserves a higher rating than the current 4.9.

The movie deserves bad reviews. I feel sorry for the budget spent on it. Poor acting, slow plot, undefined ending and overall the film makes no sense whatsoever.

Looking at most other reviews i had very low expectations but soon i realized that the bad reviews for this movie probably came from viewers who give high marks to marvel or disney star wars movies.. This is not a movie for that kind of audience.

Its a deep atmosptheric sci-fi thriller with bit of horror. Good acting, great soundtrack though somewhat slow pace. Only bad things i found were few scenes that defy basic physics and biology but thats the usual stuff nowadays.

In any case for true fans of Sci fi horrors this is more than worth a watch.

This is Rusky newb writer and director Arseny Syuhin's first full length feature film, with 6 prior short films. The 115 min runtime was way too long with many long dragged out and unnecessary scenes. There was too much filler for the little substance. I'm thinking this one should've also been a short, or cut down to 80-90 mins.

It's a poorly developed storyline, with a sloppy and convoluted screenplay, riddled with plot and technical issues. The "scare" effects of flashing red lights and steam blowing when you walk by were worse than a portable Halloween funhouse. Walking through the corridors reminded me of the first PC Doom game from the 80's. I really did like the production and set pieces though, and that elevator was nice and sketchy af, but that's about it. The rest felt like a 1980's drive-in watching The Blob or The Thing.

Syuhin's directing was adequate, but his scenes were too melodramatic and long, and the black & white and washed out colors were annoying. The score was actually decent, and the cast and performances on point. It's a decent one-time watch if you're bored on a Sunday night and a fan of this genre. It's a generous 7/10 from me.

I wanted to like this movie, being a huge fan of John Carpenter's "The Thing", and a movie buff happy to see another film from the former Soviet Union; however, this was awful. Disjointed scenes, continuity issues and I found myself wondering when this misery would end. Uninteresting sets with the same smoke and red lights and annoying alarms and poorly done suspense. Unrealistic science (awful infection control) and unexplainable editing: in one scene, the female lead is falling down a bottomless pit and then in the next scene she is walking through a laboratory that she just left. So very odd. Difficult to follow story line beyond the obvious overarching need to escape (why are they taking the elevator down when they need to be going up to the surface???) The female lead does some good acting; but, there was no way she could save this film by herself. Really not even worth watching to pass the time on a boring evening. I try and find something redeeming in every film; but, not much here and I would advise passing on this one.

In short, a boring Russian version of "The Thing" wannabe.

The trailer to this movie made me really want to watch this. Now I wish I didn't. Absolutely horrible.