DROWNING ECHO / CERT:TBC / DIRECTOR: GEORGES PADEY / SCREENPLAY: ITZIAR MARTINEZ, GEORGES PADEY / STARRING: ITZIAR MARTINEZ, DENNIS MENCIA, RAUL WALDER, SEAN ORMOND,JOSEPHINE PHOENIX, NATALIE BLACKMAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
It’s never a hugely promising proposition when a film wends its way through a number of titles on its journey towards its audience. Drowning Echo started life as Nereus (hinting at the pseudo-Grecian origins of the story’s nemesis, but probably a bit too cerebral for its intended audience) and The Complex (too dull and vague) before settling on its eventual rather dreary and ambiguous title. It seems to fit though as the film, whilst not without its moments, is itself a bit dreary and half-hearted; yet it remains our favourite ‘creature in a swimming pool’ horror movie – bearing in mind that the only other entry into this sparse sub-genre we can think of is M. Night Shyamalan’s risible Lady in the Water.
Sara (Martinez), grieving the death of her parents, decides to take a break at the apartment complex where her friends Will (Ormond) and Lindsay (Blackman) reside, the latter shortly off to Greece on business. Sara meets some of the complex’s other residents and is terrified, during the night, to find herself mysteriously and repeatedly transported to the deep end of the complex’s pool. Alex (Walder) tells Sara about a girl who went missing in the pool a few months ago (it’s the films teaser) and Sara, rather foolishly, decides to try and find out what’s been going on. She eventually discovers that there is, indeed, something very strange lurking in the pool, but it’s not quite what she – or we – might have expected.
Drowning Echo isn’t half bad but it’s hampered by the fact that there’s not really enough going on to support its generous running time, the acting really isn’t all it should be (much of the dialogue is hard to decipher due to the heavily-accented performers in leading roles) and the script is so busy building up atmosphere it occasionally forgets the need to keep the story moving and ticking along. But there are a few stand-out moments; everyone has a morbid fear of drowning and the film plays on this primal terror well with scenes of characters trapped and panicking as they sink (or are dragged) below the surface. One promotional image for Drowning Echo promising a generic thrashing, tentacled monster but the actual cause of the deaths and mysterious happenings at the complex is far more subtle and well realised in a nicely-creepy and rather eerie and unearthly CGI sequence towards the end of the film.
Drowning Echo isn’t a washout and whilst it could have done with a bit of pruning and a tighter script there’s some worthy stabs at generation tension. Here’s one supernatural swimming pool movie we’d guardedly recommending you might want to take a dip in.
