What Lurks Beneath

We all live in a terror submarine

Most mermaid movies lean to the cute, fantasy end of merthology — they even take the dark bits out of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 story “The Little Mermaid.” Seriously — have you ever read the original? Part of the bargain to lose her tail and become human is that she’ll forever feel as though she’s walking on knives; try that on today’s children. Old-school mermaid myths overall are dark, starting with the fact that their enchanting siren songs are designed to lure sailors to death by drowning.

In that vein: What Lurks Beneath opens with a submarine, the USS Titan, under attack by the Russians, presumably, since the Titan has been shadowing a Russian ship. The crew returns fire and does a deep dive to the ocean floor. While checking for damage, Titan’s engine-room team reports they’re hearing tapping on the hull, and eerie, haunting music. “At least it’s not the Russians,” says one crewman — a classic but well-delivered underestimation of what should be setting off all sorts of mental alarms. Maybe not straight to “evil mermaids” alarms, but, yes, they’re experiencing weirdness — and they’ve also just been informed that the status of U.S.-Russia relations is now Defcon 3. That’s smack in the middle of the five-point state-of-readiness scale for the American military, so, no, everything is not OK but nuclear war isn’t necessarily commencing. And if a shooting war does start, the Titan is fully loaded. The whole imbroglio contains just enough “what if?” to keep everyone aboard on edge.