The opening scenes of Jesse V. Johnson鈥檚 Above & Below are drenched in sunlight, salt spray, and the kind of careless euphoria that defines a vacation you will never forget. A group of friends, led by Laura Marano鈥檚 Tatiana, charters a course for the deep blue, chasing adrenaline above the waves and tranquility beneath them. The cinematography lingers on crystalline water and the easy banter of people who believe the biggest risk of the day is a mild sunburn. Then the engines of an approaching boat cut through the idyll, and the film pivots with a brutality that feels less like a twist and more like a door slamming shut. What begins as a postcard becomes a prison sentence, and the open water transforms into a killing field.
Johnson, a veteran of the straight-to-VOD action arena who has elevated countless B-movies with his efficient, muscular staging, applies his trade here with a distinctly nasty edge. The premise is simple: the friends are not alone. A gang of criminals, headed by a chilling Antonio Banderas as the scarred and calculating Burns, has claimed these waters for their own nefarious business. When the two groups collide, the vacationers are not merely robbed; they are hunted, forced to survive against trained predators who view human life as expendable collateral. The setup is lean, and the screenplay wastes no time on philosophical detours. This is a survival thriller that understands its currency is tension, and it spends it liberally.
Marano, best known for her Disney Channel lineage, makes a compelling case for herself as a modern scream queen with grit. Tatiana starts as the group鈥檚 optimistic planner, the one who insists everything will be fine. But as the sun dips and the threats escalate, Marano strips away that veneer of charm, revealing a core of raw, desperate resourcefulness. Her performance carries the film鈥檚 emotional weight, particularly in a third-act sequence where she must outwit a captor using only the detritus of a sinking yacht. Opposite her, Banderas delivers a masterclass in controlled menace. He does not shout; he whispers. Burns is a man who has long since abandoned morality, and Banderas imbues him with a philosophical, almost bored cruelty that makes every scene he occupies feel like a ticking clock. The supporting cast, including Christina Ochoa and Mario Tard贸n, fill out the victim pool with enough personality to make their fates matter, though the script is smart enough not to let anyone become a hero until they have bled for it.
The film鈥檚 96-minute runtime is a severe advantage. There is no fat here, no romantic subplot to pad the middle. Once the attack begins, the pacing becomes relentless, alternating between claustrophobic underwater escape sequences and violent surface confrontations. Johnson shoots the action with a practical grit that favors the chaos of flailing limbs and the cold efficiency of a knife blade over CGI spectacle. The sound design deserves particular credit; the muffled silence of the deep, broken only by the thrum of a distant propeller, generates a suffocating dread that a traditional score would have ruined.
Yet, for all its craft, Above & Below is not a film that will convert non-believers. Its TMDb rating of 6.2 and a harsher 5.2 on IMDb suggest a divide between genre purists who appreciate its lean ferocity and mainstream audiences expecting a more polished, character-driven arc. The villains, save for Banderas, are largely one-note thugs, and the dialogue in the first act is serviceable at best, designed to get us to the carnage rather than to make us weep for the victims. It is a film that knows exactly what it is: a brutal, efficient B-picture with an A-list cameo and a director who refuses to blink.
Released on July 29, 2026, Above & Below arrives in a summer glut of blockbuster epics, but it offers something those films often lack: a sense of genuine peril. There are no superpowers to save these characters, no convenient rescue helicopter. There is only the water, the weather, and the animal instinct to survive. In an era of sanitized thrills, Johnson has made a lean, mean shark of a movie - minus the shark. The monster here is human greed, and the ocean is merely the arena where it is unleashed. For fans of white-knuckle survival horror, this is a dive worth taking. Just do not expect to feel safe on your next boat trip.
