Hello everyone, and welcome back to Marvelous Videos for another riveting Lovecraftian video. If you are wondering what is in store for you today, prepare to be wowed by the film we will be discussing. The horror film What Lies Below was released in December 2020. When it was launched on Netflix, it gained a new lease on life and a larger fan base, adding to its impressive list of thrillers that includes Deadly Illusions and Fatal Affair.
What Lies Below, written and directed by Braden R. Duemmler, is a film that has it all. Braden also makes his directorial debut. When we say you are going to fall in love right away, believe us when we say you are going to fall in love right away. It includes everything from a handsome, hunky 30-year-old man -who, by the way, appears a little too perfect- to a brilliantly crafted extraterrestrial monster.
As a horror enthusiast, you should expect some really unpleasant and gruesome moments. And by incredibly nasty and strange, I mean to the point that you will exclaim, “What the hell is going on!”
What Lies Below, starring Mena Suvari, Trey Tucker, and Ema Horvath, treads a thin line between thriller and creature film. It is founded from the start on the strong performances of its three primary characters.
Despite the film’s modest cast, Duemmler, What Lies Below has a larger-than-life vibe. It clearly takes cues from great creature feature films from the 1970s and 1980s. However, it instills a fantastic sense of perspective in the simple concept of ‘lady versus monster.’ We know that a plot based on this premise has always piqued your interest as a horror lover.
So, without further ado, let us plunge into the horror, mystery, and utter terror that this film has in store for us.
Fear Comes to The Surface – What Lies Below (2020)
The film follows the story of a 16-year-old girl Liberty Wells, who is played by Ema Horvath. She also goes by Libby. She lives with her mother, Michelle Wells, who is played by the brilliant actress Mena Suvari. Now, the film begins with her return to her family’s lake house after a summer camp. The air around Libby and her mom seems to be kind of intense. Like, you can tell there are a bit of grudge between them with the way that Libby acts around her.
Michelle is a romance novelist and looks like she plans to sell their house so that Libby can go to her dream college. Now, Libby is kind of caught off guard when after reaching the lake house, she meets her mother’s new boyfriend, John Smith, played by Trey Tucker. Exceptionally handsome, tall, and gives off the look of one of those nerdy but with the hotness of a basketball player kind of a guy. Just watch him walk out of the lake yourself!
So, since Libby is super into archaeology, John gifts her a bracelet that has a Navajo Stone of Life on it. That bracelet also represents the goddess of fertility. Okay, as if that is a normal gift! Now, you are wondering about his profession? Oh, you will be surprised to find that out. Apparently, he is an aquatic geneticist. Basically, he is working on helping freshwater animals adapt and live in an increasingly saltwater world. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, wait until you figure out exactly what kind of a scientist he is.
After a little experiment he showed to Libby, he starts coughing when he touched the fork that had salt on it. You might think he probably choked or something, but nope, towards the end you will know why was this kind of important.
Now, after a fight with her mom, Libby goes on a walk and gets bit by a strange centipede. They are for sure venomous, but John comes to the rescue. A lot of sensual tension is kind of building around John and Libby and that certainly does not feel right. I mean, that is her mother’s boyfriend after all. The next part is for sure not so surprising. It is obvious at this point that Michelle is like completely obsessed in love with John, and now she falls sick. Of course, she is pregnant. How could that not happen!.
She also tells Libby that John asked her to marry him and she said yes. Then we find out that poor John thinks Michelle is 35 and not 42. Okay, now that is what you call some next-level obsession.
Things keep getting weird around John when Libby watches him drinking his own sweat. Yeah, that is not normal human behavior. So, now we finally get a glimpse of what John does in the basement of their house. Do you think it could be the monster’s lair? Well, maybe.
He is doing experiments on lampreys, who are basically ancient parasitic fish that attach themselves to other organisms in order to survive. Yeah, they are super invasive and guess what, it is a species that can live both in fresh and saltwater. So, makes sense why he would be studying them. And an even bigger surprise, one of its types actually lives in saltwater and migrates to freshwater to reproduce. Nothing about this sounds ordinary.
Now, both John and Libby go out to the waters to pull some more samples together. Get ready because it is about to get a hell of a lot awkward on that boat. Libby’s period starts and then he really quickly grabs her with his shirt but when he removes his hand, it has menstrual blood on it. Sure, at first, he tries to make it not weird for Libby, but then he goes on to lick his hand, which by the way still has that blood on it. Okay, oh god, there is definitely something inherently wrong about him.
That is not the only weirdest thing he does. Later when Libby is taking a shower, he just goes inside and starts smelling her through the curtains. And also, sniffs the t-shirt that has menstrual blood on it. I mean, what is wrong with this dude! He is doing a lot of gross things.
Now, that night, she suddenly wakes up to a strange glowing orange light outside by the lake. And you will not believe what she sees. John walks into the water towards that light and then completely disappears inside it. When she goes out looking for him, he is suddenly standing behind her, completely dry by the way, and tells her that he was sleepwalking. He sure is trying to play it cool but come on, of course, Libby is not dumb.
After a coupled of hours of sleep, when Libby finds her mom and John cuddling, they at last break the news to her that she is pregnant. Obviously, this news is horrifying for Libby because she is naturally scared of John. She tries to tell her mother about the whole incident that happened on the boat. But Michelle thinks that Libby is just jealous and she always tries to sabotage all of her relationships. That sure is a reaction she will regret later.
She once again sees that orange light appear and vanish outside, so this time when she goes to check it out, she realizes that John and her mom are just gone. Strange yes! So, she heads down to the basement which is covered with blue light and we see that the bracelet apparently branded her wrist. The part which all of you have been waiting for.
This is when we will finally get to see the true horror of John. Now, her mom is tied inside this huge tank and it looks pretty scary for both of them. Looks like John is coming back to the basement but he is probably in his true alien form because we see his feet which look giant with aquatic flaps, just super scary.
John watched Michelle give birth but looks like he is super pissed about whatever is born. He takes the baby outside and spits a ball of blue light into the baby’s mouth. Libby tries to contact the police and tells them about her situation. But it does not look like anything can save Libby and her mom right now because John is back and he has spotted Libby. He picks her up and we see that his tongue is super long and split in two, kind of like a snake’s tongue only it is creepier.
She throws a bucket of salt at him and he clearly can’t stand salt. Libby and her mom rush out of the basement but Michelle looks like she was burnt in sun or something and she is dying. Now, something attacks Libby and she wakes up inside the basement tied to a chair.
We now see multiple Johns walking around, tearing down the wall which apparently has redheaded women stored inside. What could get scarier than this! Now, the John that we know tries to force-feed that same ball of blue light to Libby, and then she wakes up in this diamond-shaped water coffin, which is rapidly filling with water.
The scene goes wide and there are lots of similar water coffins on both sides of Libby. And every single one of them is completely filled with water and redheaded women inside them. The film ends with Libby being totally inside water and then she smiles. Okay, that is a terrifying situation to be smiling in Libby, what is wrong with you!
The fact that the film is called What Lies Below, it is pretty obvious that John is probably a creature that lives in the water. It definitely also hints toward there being a whole species of him because we did see a whole bunch of Johns!.
We know you can’t wait to find out what exactly is John and what is he after. Well, without further delay, let us jump into it.
Aquatic Monster a Scaly Fish-Person Monster Explored
John Smith is introduced to us in the movie as a human being. Of course, at first, he seems way too perfect for a human, but that is probably just the genius of Trey Tucker as an actor. Well, we soon figure out any way that he is no ordinary human being. Actually, he is not a human being at all. Early on in the film, he tries to act and behave normally but actually ends up doing a lot of strange and weird things that point to several red flags for us to think he is not normal at all.
What we thought about John, nothing turns out to be true. He is not an aquatic geneticist who is super concerned about aquatic animals and their survival. Nope, in fact, he is a predatory alien, that is right! He has come down to earth from his home planet, obviously along with a lot of his brothers. Remember earlier in the film, he kind of choked because of saltwater being on his fork. Well, that is because the creature that John actually is needs fresh water to survive.
That explains why during the end of the film Libby was successfully able to throw a lot of salt at John and that ended up injuring him and he released a lot of smoke. Now, the research that he is doing in the basement is of course all a part of his plan. The way he stores all the women towards the end, it is clear through that, that his species want to procreate with women and there could be a possible alien takeover at the back of their heads. You never know!
Now, the reason why he is studying Lampreys in the basement is due to their ability to adapt to salt water. They definitely suck the life out of their hosts, but who better to study than lampreys if you cannot stand saltwater. John clearly is a fish-person kind of a monster who is trying to create hybrid babies which will have the genes of his species as well as the genes of redheaded women.
earlier in the movie when Libby goes to town, she saw a guy that looked exactly like John, only with a different beard and he wore specs. He was walking with a redheaded girl and sniffing her hair. Turned out, that he was probably one of the John clones we saw at the end of the film. But how do they all look the same? Well, John is basically designed by his species.
He is an exoskeleton that could be based on a Venus flytrap. But even though the exoskeleton is the same, the algorithm tends to vary from one John to another. Now, John is one of them who is a scientist and also a bit nerdy. While the other was a bit of a hipster. And another is more rock-and-roll. They are designed in this manner so that they can attract different personalities and different kinds of women. This is probably why they all look like hot and perfect men. In the end, they are only looking for specimens to procreate.
Now, don’t you think it was strange that the women they are interested in were all redheaded? On the boat, after John tasted Libby’s blood, he said to her, “You have red in your hair”. That is because both Michelle and Libby have natural red hair which has been dyed blond. But how did he know that? John was also sniffing that blood-stained shirt and enjoying it a lot. It is possibly because his species’ senses are more advanced and they can literally smell genes.
Now, even the women that were trapped in those water tanks. Every single one of them was a redhead. They have this obsession with the red hair gene because John’s species can only procreate with us because of that one gene. So, basically, his species is trying to figure out how they can stay on our planet pretty permanently and take over it.
It is also most likely that his species can do some form of mind control on the women that they trap because Michelle clearly had like an unhealthy obsession with John. We also saw in the last scene of the film when Libby was struggling inside that water tank which kept filling, she gave a slight smile at the end, right before our screens went black and credits rolled in.
That could indicate that she can breathe underneath the water because of that blue light thing that John forced down her throat. It also could be that since she knows there is no way for her to escape, John made her accept this fate through the same kind of power which he had over her mother.
If you are a fan of the legendary horror author HP Lovecraft, you will actually recognize John Smith’s creature design, and his performance as a part-fish, part-human monster which appears to be influenced by the widely known short story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”.
In comparison to most stories where we see the love interest who actually is a monster at the end, John Smith is clearly not represented as a caring or understandable figure. We have seen in a lot of anthology horrors just like Tales From the Dark Side: The Movie, which commonly shows a weepy female monster who does not want to kill her male romantic partner and couldn’t really help but show her true form in the end.
What Lies Below actually portrays zealously, a group of male monsters who are constantly trying to seduce and attract women. They mercilessly try to transform their bodies into these chambers for procreating their dreadful species, which is a rather interesting move for a Lovecraftian romance.
In Michelle, the film also represents a character so madly in love that she fails to notice the monstrous side of John. Even when Libby warns her that John Smith feels a little too perfect to be real and later goes ahead to tell her that he in fact assaulted her own daughter, she chooses not to believe Libby.
Braden Duemmler clearly gives us a fantastic take on a Lovecraftian romance that is more on the victim and monstrous side than on a blind love interest gone way too wrong. If you are hoping to get creeped out by the many disturbing scenes in this film, What Lies Below is definitely for you.
Well, guys, with that, we come to the end of another amazing video. Comment down below the scene that was most difficult to watch for you. We hope you enjoyed watching today’s video. Make sure to drop a like and hit that subscribe button on your way out. Until then, stay safe and have a great day ahead!