I wanted to like this movie. I cannot stress enough how much I really wanted to like this movie. On paper, it has everything I want: a low relatively low budget, a journey underwater, and a big silly monster. Even though Gods of the Deep has all the right ingredients, the final meal is bland and underwhelming.

Gods of the Deep follows a submarine crew on their way to investigate a mysterious gateway on the ocean floor at the behest of a mysterious, wealthy company. We have a son following in his father’s footsteps, a spunky but capable crew, and a mysterious old and rich company man. Very Journey to Atlantis, very promising.

The monster design in the film is actually pretty good. Absent one truly strange choice where they put fake ivy from Dollar General all over an allegedly aquatic creature, the monster effects are satisfyingly slimy and gross. We also get a convincing fully-resolved monster scene with some solid work at creating interesting scale.

Several of the actors really put forth some effort into improving the film. Tim Cartwright (as Gordon Atkins) hits the right notes as the pilot of the ill-fated submarine. Rowena Bentley (as Julia Goldstein) provides some of the best banter back at mission control. Rory Wilton (as Hank O’Connell) manages to be quite likeable and convincing.

I am not convinced the dullness of some of the other characters is entirely the actors’ fault.

Unfortunately, the main character Jim Peters has the personality of stale bread and is impossible to root for. Jim’s sad story about his dad has no emotional legs. His chemistry with his romantic opposite has the dynamism of wilted lettuce.

There are also some perplexing choices throughout the movie that really stand out in a bad way. As per usual with the quest genre, we spend some time establishing a backstory for crew. At this point in these sorts of films, we learn about how incredibly qualified the different members of the team are and see them interact with each other. In Gods of the Deep, we find out our crew consists of: a guy with a famous dad and a random marine biologist who isn’t sure she actually wants to go. Random couples buying beach houses on HGTV are better qualified to lead a sub-oceanic mission. This is a movie, it’s fake! You can make up anything! Make up something more impressive! We are then treated to some incredible character development, where everyone leaves the top-secret rich company meeting to eat some takeout in the cafeteria and say nothing interesting about themselves. The one female crew member has a kid, which becomes her reason for doing everything, whoop dee doo, I can’t believe it.

Once we board the submarine, we easily defy the laws of ocean pressure and reach the ocean floor in about four seconds, leaving no time for any of the characters to become any more interesting. We get some hints at world building, like glimpses of a strange new world on the ocean floor and a wormhole where time skips ahead. But we simply ignore that for the rest of the film and spend the duration very slowly heading back to the surface.

This is a big misstep. A lot of potentially interesting plot space is literally left on the ocean floor. Gods of the Deep needed to take its time and really savor the moment of discovery that is allegedly driving the entire film forward. Other ocean-based horror gives us longer both in moments of doldrums and mechanical emergencies to really make us believe we have been transported hopelessly far beneath the surface.

The other problem that plagues the entire enterprise is how much time people spend just...standing there. Admittedly, this is potentially very funny, if it is on purpose. I liken to it playing hide-and-seek with a very young child, who thinks that as long as they have their hands over their eyes, you can’t see them. The characters in Gods of the Deep cease to exist if the camera is not directly focused on them. It doesn’t matter if they are being threatened by a flood, a tentacle monster, or literally bleeding out. They just...wait. This slows down the pace and stakes of the action scenes to the point I was desperately rooting for the tentacle overlords to just end it.

Overall, the film just isn’t anything. It’s not truly unwatchable, but it squanders its potential. If it was in front of me for some reason, I would watch it. But I am certainly not descending to the ocean floor for a chance to see Gods of the Deep.