Spain 1965, two young boys dare each other to go and check out a deserted town, before its flooded into a man-made lake. But they weren't alone and discover something quite horrific about those people who have been left to drown. Foolishly one of the lads unleashes the evil. We travel 40 years into the present, and the town is celebrating its damn's anniversary, but the evil that had plagued its community many decades ago is back lurking in the waters. So it's up to a local TV reporter and out-of-town photographer to stop this evil from resurfacing.<br /><br />If it wasn't for the name Brian Yuzna being tagged to the project, I probably wouldn't have bothered. Well, after watching it. It didn't matter either way. Has Yuzna hit rock bottom after the dreadful "Rottweiler" and incredibly bland "Beneath Still Waters"? I hope not, as his been apart of a few greatly creative horror flicks and lets hope the next Re-animator film doesn't follow the same suit of his latest two. <br /><br />The main problem with the Spanish production "Beneath Still Waters" is that the script is insipidly one-note and the ploddingly colourless screenplay (which is taken off Matthew Costello's novel) just doesn't know what its wants to be and goes in so many different directions without any sort of gelling chemistry. The dark concept is a compellingly spooky one, but they tried for something too ambitious here and never captured the tenor that would've made it worked. What starts off like an atmospherically stimulating and morbidly eerie opening few minutes, eventually falls into a systematically mundane and just plain silly outing that loses it ominous air and brooding suspense it began with. The mysterious story starts to feel secondary and becomes convoluted, when the lousily questionable digital effects (poorly staged underwater scenes) and competently unpleasant gore fx and grotesque special make-up effects take over. These profound latter moments are fine and all in well, but when it keeps you waiting around with drably uninteresting characters and a confusing parade of predictable (though there "one" moment that's not-so) ideas. From this format it can just lead to a complete and utter drag for most part, because of too little action. Gladly it does spice up things in the perversely shocking, but horrendously ridiculous latter half. Throwing gratuitous gore, violence, skin and lust. Maybe it comes to late? <br /><br />Yuzna does stamp his trademark directorial style. Even then it can't hide how unevenly lumpy his execution is. Sometimes he can go over-the-top, but suddenly fall into a lethargic puddle. But he does stage few imaginative and effective set-pieces with nice brushes in lighting composition. The film is actually technically good and Johnny Yebra's handsomely shot cinematography and the pristinely haunting and saturated Spanish locations do come through. The routine musical score is basically non-existent in creating any sense of mood and falls flat. The acting (mostly a Spanish cast) is either elastically ripe or lackadaisical. Raquel Merono looks stunning, but won't win anything for her humdrum performance and English actor Michael Mckell is acceptably so-so in the leading parts. Patrick Gordon's mishandled performance as supernatural entity just doesn't seem to reek of any uncomfortable menace and takes up too much screen time to be effective any shape. Diana Peñalver (from "Braindead") shows up in a small part.<br /><br />In the long run this cheaply produced b-flick by Fantastic Factory simply bites off more than it could chew. I don't think this picture is completely deadbeat, but the bad points do seem to outweigh the good.