Underwater reviews: New Kristen Stewart film branded 'Alien knockoff that's a thousand times less scary'

The actor shot the film three years ago

Underwater, a deep sea horror film starring Kristen Stewart, is finally being released after being shot three years ago – and the verdicts are in.

The monster movie, which also stars Vincent Cassel, charts the journey of survivors of an endangered deep-sea drilling crew, and – going by the first reviews and reactions on social media – it seems critics are split down the middle.

While some are praising the film for being “super fun” and “terribly claustrophobic” (one writer called it a “creature feature soaked in pressurised tension”), a handful of other people said it pales in comparison to the films it is trying to homage, namely Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Variety's Owen Gleiberman, who calls it an Alien “knock-off” that is “a thousand times less scary”, writes: ”It’s stupefying entertainment in which every claustrophobic space and apocalyptic crash of water registers as a slick visual trigger – yet it’s all built on top of a dramatic void."

He adds that you spend the entire film wondering “what an actor as classy as Stewart is doing” in it.

The Guardian concurs, with Benjamin Lee stating: “It’s a solid, competently directed regurgitation of an oft-told tale that never manages to justify its own existence.”

Next Best Picture's Matt Neglia was particularly damning. “What an incoherent mess of a film,” he wrote.

Among those who did enjoy the film, though, was The Hollywood Reporter writer Brian Davids, who described the film as “lean-and-mean science-fiction with plenty of scares and thrills.”

See a collection of the mixed responses below.

Underwater is released in the UK on 7 February.