THE WATERMEN (2011)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed/Written by Matt L. Lockhart.

I can hear the elevator pitch now. It’s THE DEADLIEST CATCH meets HILLS HAVE EYES. While the locale is different, THE WATERMEN takes cues from backwoods horror films such as THE HILLS HAVE EYES, WRONG TURN, and a million other films like it where a group of monstrous men terrorize a group of kids. While the premise isn’t anything particularly new, THE WATERMEN does have some things going for it, particularly a genuinely creepy set of killers and some nice sequences highlighting some gore well done.

Jason (everything Kevin Smith has done) Mewes plays Trailor here, a party animal with a large bank account who supplies the girls for a weekend excursion into the Atlantic. The rest of the ridiculously good-looking cast isn’t very memorable as their acting skills most definitely weren’t the reason for them to be in this film. It’s all silicone and six packs here for the Watermen to pick off. I know some think it is cathartic to see these perfect people lined up and slaughtered, but I long for the day when I related to the people in peril. Making them plasticized models does not aid me in relating to them. In fact, it’s quite the opposite and usually has me cheering more for the villains than anything else.

And the villains here are a surly bunch of scrubs, which ends up saving the movie. If the cast of THE DEADLIEST CATCH developed a taste for human flesh, you’d have the bad guys of THE WATERMAN. Always looking wet and mumbling in their most guttural SLING BLADE accents, these horrors of the sea are indeed something pretty scary. And yes, the harpoons and fishing gear used to catch and kill these good looking lads and lasses add a bit more menace to them as well.

Filmmaker Matt L. Lockhart isn’t afraid to get gory as the Watermen carve the kids up into chum for their fishing boats. Legs are speared, necks are fish-hooked, arms are carved and sliced. There’s even an inspired scene when one of the chick’s implants are torn out of her. This one gets pretty gory, so it has that going for it.

The rest of the film is pretty by the numbers as the kids are picked off one by one. There’s even a teaser toward the end to suggest a sequel, may I suggest THE WATERMEN II: SWAB HARDER as the title perhaps? Mewes does bring some much-needed character to the cast and some of his humor rings as genuinely funny, while others is broad, easy humor more at home in a locker room than in any self-respecting film. For some reason, Mewes’ go-to joke is showing his testicles, which he does again here for an all too uncomfortably long scene. That alone gave me more quivers and shakes than the rest of the film.

THE WATERMEN is not a badly made group of slashers meet models flick. The main fault here is that it is a typical horror film that any well-seasoned horror film watcher will be able to call beat by beat. The cast is capable, but too pretty, and even though his part is small, Mewes nutsack, along with some mumbling monsters and some slick gore, can’t save this film from being bits and pieces of films we’ve seen before.