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The setup for the Russian horror movie The Superdeep sounds very familiar, in which a research team digs up more than they bargained for at a snowy drill site. What they discover puts humanity’s survival at stake. Despite a plot and trailer, both suggestive of a creature-heavy effort, reading like another copycat of The Thing, The Superdeep attempts to forge new ground from the historical Kola Superdeep Borehole project. While there are a few moments of creature thrills, they’re overshadowed by a messy narrative without much direction.
The actual Kola Superdeep Borehole drill passed 39,000 feet in 1983, prompting a pause for about a year for celebrations and scientific discovery. The Superdeep takes place in 1984 and follows morally dubious scientist Anya (Milena Radulovic) as her military handler enlists her to accompany him into the bowels of the site to recover vital information for the Soviet Union. Escorted by the military, they discover that some of the research facility was welded shut, and only a skeleton crew remains to await retrieval. Despite ominous and forceful warnings from a site scientist, Anya and the team proceed to uncover a world of horror deep beneath the Earth’s surface.
In truth, that concise description reads far more coherent than the events that transpire. Nothing about Anya’s voyage is easy to follow, both visually and narratively. The dubbed language makes the stilted and awkward dialogue more pronounced, and it feels like a feature that’s filtered through a google translator multiple times, from Russian to English and back. Worse, a lot of the dialogue lacks purpose, at least to the events on screen. Similarly, characterization is nonexistent. Motivations are murky, at best, and many of the group never even get an introduction. It’s just Anya, a soldier that’s relentlessly interested in her despite a lack of chemistry on either end, her handler, and a bunch of random fodder that will come and go at whim.
The Superdeep marks the feature debut for writer/director Arseny Syuhin, and in this case, the inexperience shows. Most of the action and horror sequences are obscured by clunky blocking, choreography, and hazy VFX work that hides some of the great practical effects. It’s impossible to get a feel for the facility’s layout; an elevator serves as the central set piece that seems to connect random levels of intricate labs and living spaces, very atypical of its deep underground setting. The worldbuilding here is thinly written and vague. There’s no escalation or story progression, just a series of scenes connected by characters behaving randomly. When the runtime is so sparsely filled for a nearly two-hour runtime, the pacing crawls.
There’s a simple, solid concept buried deep within the core of The Superdeep, but it’s not one that Syuhin fleshed out beyond that. It’s a short film stretched out well beyond its limitations. The filmmaker tries to compensate by throwing in a slew of borrowed ideas from influences that include The Last of Us, Alien, Resident Evil, and The Thing, yet none of them stick. They can’t; there’s nothing for these ideas to hold onto here- no clear vision or purpose, no real story, and no characters. Not even a few fun moments of creature mayhem can distract from this convoluted mess.
The Superdeep arrives on Shudder on June 17, 2021.
