Sound from the Deep (2017) User Reviews

Rating it for what it is rather than what it could have been

[bastionrobin · 8/10 · 15 November 2021]

I personally loved this short film. I am a big fan of Lovecraftian stories and this one manages to forge that while also being unique in many aspects.

Characters: The characters are somewhat reminiscent of Alien with many of them just wanting to be done with the trip and others finding out secrets about the their true intentions. The acting at times did feel a bit stilted but it worked to give us this realistic setting of people who didn't know each other and were tired from a long voyage. Making the professor a bit weird at first helped to mislead the audience yet hint at his intentions. I am glad the main character is a smaller more science based guy rather than some bulky crew member. Helps to prevent the movie from feeling cliché and let's him actually drive the plot because his decision affects what happens on board. Him being a scientist but also a student lowers his authority and shows what type of person he is and his logical perspective. He is presented as being a bit traumatized when he is discovered and can only hold on to his world view and position as a scientist, the one thing keeping his mind intact.

Setting/cinematography: People bash on the setting being cliché but I felt like it was more of a nod to their inspiration and I don't blame them for the Arctic setting either. It is a mysterious place with tons of room for isolation and added danger, plus where the hell would you hide an ocean god, a deep sea drill is a bit out of their budget btw. They play into that danger of Antarctica's climate a little which also pushes the plot, go figure.

I enjoyed how they used the lighting. The light is a bit flat and desaturated at first but that creates an analytical and bleak setting that shows no real sign of danger with few shadows. As the story progresses it stays like this until our main character discovers some secrets about the professor's real intentions. They strengthen the shadows and add an aqua tone to the light that keeps building. They use the light to express his sense of comfort in the film since we mostly see it when he is around people he cares about/trusts. We see the light return to the start for an instant when he is assured their mission is not nefarious and that he was right about it being gas but instead something else happens. The darker and ominous lighting in this film helps to convey the fear and mystery they are experiencing when encountering the Lovecraftian elements.

Story is not being spoiled but I will say it is basic but good for a short film because it leaves you wanting more especially with the ending. It manages to feel unique in some aspects(designs) and have a Lovecraftian inspiration as well.

Pacing: Each event in this story has a purpose and buildup that pushes the plot and reveals story elements. We get implications of the main character's possible immunities regarding the sound and what the entity will be. They keep in mind their smaller scale and waste no time.

Effects/set: I am curious how they got this set. It seems like it would be costly but I imagine they tagged along the crew's mission to get some shots but went back to the docks to shoot others. The set felt small, but real and didn't break my immersion at any point. They definitely put a ton of their budget into the special effects and it shows! The Lovecraftian element feels like a god and feels infinite! The best way to describe it is as this cloud made of a dark flesh with these creepy frog eyes. It feels alien and it looks cosmic with earth like elements that many Lovecraftian creatures have. The effects look almost practical in some portions and definitely have implications for the theme.

Theme: It is a mix of tampering with secrets that should have remained unknown but also climate change. They say it out right which was a bit too on the nose for me but the creature design definitely brings that with the black cloud look. It was effective and not inaccurate, especially with the revealing of danger since prehistoric viruses are being found in frozen ice.

Final thoughts: This film was great. It was especially good as a short film that I find was brilliantly directed and prepared. It does it's job at entertaining and bringing a great cosmic horror story. It is a good way to bring some talented people to light SO WATCH IT NOW! Seriously you won't regret it and it doesn't feel like a 2 hour waste of time like some movies these days.

Outstanding Lovecraft Horror

[PlasticConstant · 10/10 · 13 January 2018]

Although the poster claims that Sound from the Deep is inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, it is so ingrained with the minutia of his style that this 2017 short film feels like an extension of the maestro himself. In a mere 30 minute runtime, the writing and directing team of Joonas Allonen and Antti Laakso establish a dark and brooding world saturated with remnants of the Great Old Ones, only to leave our sole narrator a psychological mess.

An international research group is searching for natural resources from the Arctic Ocean. As they are about to end the voyage empty-handed, a strange underwater sound is heard from far north. Thinking it might be natural gas, they start their journey to the uncharted areas. As they get closer, they begin to understand the true nature of the sound.

The film's plot seems vaguely familiar, but Allonen and Laakso manage to capture the nitty-gritty of what makes a tale Lovecraftian and executes it perfectly. The result is the first truly horrifying and mind-bending attempt at Lovecraftian storytelling in years. The continual sense of impending doom is nailed perfectly by the strong performances from Eero Ojala, Lasse Fagerström, Anastasia Trizna, Mikael Andersson, and Fabian Silén, while Ville Muurinen's cinematography is supported by a frozen, watery wasteland and the cold, sterile interior of an exploration vessel. The production is as enormous as the threats that lurk in the icy depths of the ocean.

Joonas Allonen and Antti Laakso and the team at Twisted Films have delivered a shocking and terrifying short film that also manages to be wonderfully mesmerizing. Hopefully, once Sound from the Deep ends its award-winning festival run, audiences everywhere will get a chance to see and own this fantastic piece of cinema.

Ambitious but clichéd and clunky

[Miasmakoala · 4/10 · 12 March 2019]

This is a very generous 4/10, I really don't have too many good things to say about this Lovecraftian short film. The landscape shots and special effects looked great and Sofia's actor did good.

I really wanted to like the movie but I can't overlook the clunky acting, nonexistent thrills and bad sound mixing and a cheesy ending. I wished for a more psychological approach instead of this.

When they first hear the sound it gets messed with the soundtrack and overall it sounds a bit bad, it would've been a lot more scary if they'd cut off the background music. A man shouting in a room sounds more like he's in a different room, again, because the soundtrack gets too loud there.

Scenes at the table look very bad, the camera angles were really distracting and the actors seemed bored. Some of the lines (it's gas, what else could make that sound) are terrible.

I didn't like the lead actor at all. He looks like he wasn't really cast and he somehow accidentally got caught in the filming process and he didn't want to say anything. His character felt nothing more than a prop reacting to stuff around him. It really didn't feel like he was going crazy at all, just frowning and saying lines in front of a camera.

More of a proof a concept than a true film

[Ydin · 3/10 · 17 March 2019]

Making of great movie is hard thing to a accomplish. The process of creating one manage that requires time, money and skill and an ability to make sacrifices in one aspect to benefit the whole whilst also managing the budget and the limited time you have to film paid actors is a taunting task. Often an impossible one and results in product that was not quite what the director envisioned due to too many restraints.

Not without merit, the writing and directing due of Joonas Allonen and Antti Laakso manage to create a fantastic setting and a premise for their H.P. Lovecraft inspired story that is respectful to the source of it's inspiration, going as far as adapting some of the wording in actors lines. Whether that was a smart move, remains another topic. Set in the arctic ocean 'Sound from the Deep' is a homage to "Call of Cthulhu" with aspects of other stories of Lovecraft written in. The elements displayed along with brief moments of being a proper story brings me hope that it was only the lack of of resources that shrunk this movie to it's length and quality and not the lack of talent, effort or passion of the writers and directors.

Unfortunately, the great ideas and glimmers of ingenious choices are washed away with many a cinematic sin, from pacing, editing, framing and inefficient use of lighting. The story itself rushes a good premise of an building paranoia and distrust while solving a mystery to a uninteresting jog through set pieces with little room for atmosphere or time to develop characters or events. The arctics deep dark nights and brighter than bright days aren't utilized for contrast although surely a great deal of eerie atmosphere could be pulled from the setting. The sound design is horrendous despite being in the title and subject of the movie, it is unimaginative and doesn't equally understand how to pull the audiences strings. Take for example the glorious sounds of the hull warping under the pressure of 'Das Boot', or the eerie creaking ever present on board the 'The Terror', how simple sounds create the backdrop of discomfort to scenes and you know this film desperately needed just that. Acting in this movie is probably worst things around: everybody is struggling with their thicker than stone accents parred with clunky dialogue that no human would speak with minimal acting skills or room to develop, It's hard to say what is intentional here, or if these people can act beyond dialogue reading but it doesn't serve the overall flow.

Overall, this isn't a real short film as much as it isn't a real film: It's student work, a proof of concept that pretends its a real short film. And quite honestly, for the parts I enjoyed: Being very Lovecraft, paranoia plot in a small ship, the waking up sequence, and how they used their cheap but appropriate effects, I do hope it gets picked up to be reworked into a full feature film with more talented and experience cast, production crew and others to guide it through. But as it is now, I can only recommend it for people to see out of curiosity.