It’s been a while since Shitty Movie Sundays has featured a film made in the 21st century. But, sometimes we feel the itch. It’s not as if the 20th century has a lock on bad movies. The digital age has removed many of the barriers to making a movie, and independent auteurs have responded.
Today’s flick is Submarine, a new release from screenwriter C.M. Wright and director Max McCall. Submarine is such a new release that, as of this writing, its IMDb page still has it listed as an upcoming film, under the title Submarine of the Deep. That title stinks, so it’s a good thing it was changed. The bad news is, an improved title does nothing to make a movie better.
Submarine follows the misadventures of a research submarine. Its small crew of four manages to wedge the sub between some rocky mounts on the ocean floor, trapping everyone. Meanwhile, colleagues on the surface try to arrange a rescue. There is a movie to be found in that plot. It’s been made before, more than once. It’s a story ripe with suspense. We all have at least a touch of claustrophobia, and the idea of being trapped on the 
ocean floor under thousands of pounds of pressure, with a diminishing oxygen supply, is the stuff of nightmares. So, of course this movie is about the skipper’s marriage falling apart.
That’s right. The most significant interpersonal drama in this flick is the love triangle between the skipper (Cici Clarke), her husband, who also happens to be the sub’s engineer (Alexander Butler), and the helmsman (Matt Lewis). There is little else that seems to concern them, even while they are slowly suffocating to death.
Meanwhile, up on the surface, once the sub is in distress, every scene that isn’t a flashback is a Zoom call with a hardnosed rescuer and the skipper’s sister, both uncredited. These scenes are excruciating to watch. So much so that it’s a relief when the flick switches back to the drama aboard the sub.
It’s hard to imagine a submarine disaster flick so poorly handled, but there it is. It’s essentially a two location movie, with one of those locations being a sparsely decorated submarine interior, and the other being a recreation of work from home. I despise Zoom call sequences in movies. Filmmakers, if it is at all possible, avoid these sequences and put your characters in the same room.
There’s no reason to equivocate. This movie is garbage. We celebrate movies from all sources at Shitty Movie Sundays, but we don’t lie, either. This is bottomfeeding stuff. Congrats, Max McCall and company. You made a movie. Do better next time. Submarine takes over the #580 spot in the Index from Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. I watched this movie so you don’t have to.