Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Submerged’

Written by Scott Edwards

There are many frightening things that can happen in your life that can make it flash in front of your eyes. I don’t know what is scarier when this happens, if you are really about to die, or that it can happen more than once. One of the scariest ways to die in my opinion is being buried alive since it all comes down to waiting to pass on while you are not able to do anything about it. That is followed by drowning, since you may take your last breath long before you believe that your time should be up. Well, Submerged brings the best (or worst) of both of my greatest fears to life on the screen and makes me wonder if there is anything that could frighten me any further.

While driving a group of his little brother’s friends home from the club, Matt is met head on by several armed men that are looking to kidnap his employer’s daughter. While Matt has been trained in the military and is able to defend himself, looking after someone else is more difficult than he ever expected it to be. Being able to protect Jessica from being kidnapped, Matt is forced to drive the limo aggressively and winds up driving into the river. With everyone in the limo being okay, they know that the oxygen is running out and they need to make up a plan to escape before the car becomes their coffin. 

As the group is waiting for help from someone since the GPS in the car is still functional, Matt ponders on what brought him to this place in his life. Thinking back, Matt is told by his employer that there have been many threats on his daughter Jessica’s life, and it will be his job to protect her. As Jessica is dating Matt’s younger brother Dylan at the time, it is easy to keep an eye out, but when his employer shuts down the factory in the town, it is becoming a more dangerous endeavor. Without his parents to lend a hand, Matt works numerous jobs to make ends meet so he and his brother can survive, but when Dylan cannot defend himself against the bullying at school, he winds up taking his own life. But the memory of Dylan hasn't faded since Matt is reminded of his little brother every time, he looks at Jessica and with her basically being the only family he has left, he decides to drive her and her friends for their night on the town. Little does he or the youths in the back know how the night is about to end.

I have always been straight forward about this; flashbacks are not on the top of my list on how to tell a story. With that being said, Submerged did a pretty good job in keeping pace with the story by using them. Seeing the dynamic between Dylan and Matt were the best parts of the movie, and while Matt would do anything to keep his little brother safe and happy, it destroyed Matt when his efforts were not enough. But it is hard to take little tidbits away from everyone trapped in the limo on the bottom of the river, since clearly a raw experience of fear is what the movie wants us to share with these characters. Everyone deals with what is happening to them in their own ways, but the story is ramped up when they all start to point fingers at each other, blaming someone else for the predicament that they are currently in. The movie does a great job in showing how people can turn against one another when all of the cards are on the table, and for that reason, I was not disappointed in it one bit.

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