Summary

• The monster in the movie Underwater is confirmed to be Cthulhu, a character from H.P. Lovecraft's literature, adding to the cosmic horror of the film.
• The inclusion of Cthulhu in Underwater symbolizes the theme of climate change, with the monster representing the planet fighting back against human greed and destruction.
• While the monster's origins in the movie are not explicitly explained, it is hinted that the drilling crew's actions awakened the Deep Ones, leading to the emergence of Cthulhu and other ancient monsters from the ocean depths.

The Underwater movie monster turned Norah's deep-sea mission on the Kepler 822 into a thalassophobia-fueled nightmare that would make H.P. Lovecraft proud, but the film itself doesn't implicitly spell out what the creature is. William Eubank's claustrophobic 2020 horror movie Underwater was set 11,000 meters under the sea in the murky depths of the Mariana Trench. It follows the crew of a deep-sea drill as they deal with the fallout of a catastrophe: a natural disaster destroys the structural integrity of the thin metal walls separating them from over 10,000 atmospheres of saltwater pressure. However, when the monster showed up at the end of Underwater, the plot turned on its head.

The monster in Underwater was one of an almost unprecedented scale and threat, and Norah (Kristen Stewart) ended up sacrificing herself to slay it. Norah never finds out what the creature in Underwater is, but William Eubank has since confirmed its identity — the monster in the Underwater movie is Cthulhu. Present across many forms of media, Cthulhu was created by H.P. Lovecraft in the 1928 short story The Call of Cthulhu, but Underwater isn't an adaptation of that book. Since the creature in Underwater was the Great Cthulhu from H.P. Lovecraft's literature, many have wondered what his presence means.

Underwater is available to stream on Hulu.

The Monster In The Underwater Movie Is Cthulhu

The 2020 Kristen Stewart Sci-Fi Horror Is Secretly Lovecraftian

While some saw a similarity to the monster in Underwater and Cthulhu, its identity as the H.P. Lovecraft monster isn't directly stated in Eubank's film — although there were multiple strong clues. There were of course viewers who spotted Cthulhu in Underwater straight away, but there was speculation that the monster might have been part of the Cloverfield cinematic universe.

Director William Eubanks ended the debates in an interview with Mr. H Reviews on YouTube, confirming that Kristen Stewart's Underwater character had indeed encountered Cthulhu. This also means that Norah's sacrifice was for naught, as a being like Cthulhu can't be destroyed by conventional means. Cthulhu is a God, and Eubanks said the monster in Underwater, true to its cosmic horror origins, can never truly die.

In H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, Cthulhu is the "Great Old One" who resides beneath the ocean in a death-like sleep. He is a Titan god with a tentacled head and a massive body. He also has wings, which Eubank made sure to show spreading out at the end of Underwater to let everyone know the monster was Cthulhu. Despite all this, people still seemed unsure about his identity. The director even said that his producers said the monster in Underwater had to die, but he knew it couldn't, so he just left it ambiguous, although he clarifies it is still alive and down in the ocean after the movie.

There were also the smaller underwater mermaid-like creatures attached to Cthulhu in the Underwater movie, which were likely the Deep Ones, also of Lovecraftian mythology. Deep Ones are usually peaceful with humans, but in this case, they were serving the Great Old One, and disturbing them was how Tian Industries caused all the problems that kick-started Underwater's plot. They drilled somewhere they never should have broached and woke up the Deep Ones. With them awake, it awoke Cthulhu also and this started the terror and attacks on the base and its inhabitants. It opened up the chance that more great ancient monsters could one day come out of the deep.

The Origin Of The Monster In Underwater Explained

The Underwater Movie Doesn't Show Where The Monster Came From

The monster in Underwater may be Cthlulhu, but this connection to H.P. Lovecraft isn't stated directly in the movie, and has more of a bearing on its themes rather than the plot. The origins of the Underwater monster as a standalone entity are relatively straightforward. A freak earthquake destroys 70 percent of the crew’s base. As the characters fight their way toward the surface, they come across strange, human-looking fish creatures with a penchant for violence.

Liam Smith (John Gallagher Jr.) theorizes that shift in the ocean floor opened up a bridge between two ecosystems, one of them being home to these brutal predators. Emily (Jessica Hanwick), a research assistant brought onboard to study marine life, explains that the earthquake itself is their fault. An analogy for climate change, it represents the way human greed is turning the ocean itself antagonistic “We’ve drilled too deep. We’ve taken too much,” Emily explains.

While some diehard Lovecraft fans retrospectively wished Underwater had done more with Cthulhu and his origins after his presence was confirmed, keeping the details ambiguous in the movie itself was in keeping with Lovecraft's own thoughts on horror.

The origin of the monster in Underwater is one shared by many Hollywood kaiju, movie monsters, and prehistoric creatures emerging in modern times. At the bottom of the ocean, the crew of the Kepler 822 discover that the depths hide a hidden world, one that humanity opens with its unchecked corporate greed and scientific meddling — with disastrous consequences. That's about as much an explanation as Underwater gives for the creatures in the ocean.

While some diehard Lovecraft fans retrospectively wished Underwater had done more with Cthulhu and his origins after his presence was confirmed, keeping the details ambiguous in the movie itself was in keeping with Lovecraft's own thoughts on horror. Underwater proved that Lovecraft's most famous creation works in modern horror settings on the big screen. Providing an expanded explanation of who Cthulhu and the Deep Ones are within the movie itself would have removed the fear factor from the Underwater monster, rather than enriched the viewing experience.

The Underwater Movie Used Cthulhu To Symbolize Climate Change

Eubanks Used Lovecraft's Concepts To Address Contemporary Issues

It seems strange to use Cthulhu to symbolize climate change, but that is what the monster in Underwater was used to thematically explore by director William Eubank. Mostly, H.P. Lovecraft didn't use his gods and monsters to represent contemporary issues. At the time he created Cthulhu, climate change wasn't a concept that existed in the public consciousness. While environmentalist and conservationist movements existed, their ideas weren't heavily thematically present in H.P. Lovecraft's work.

This is where the way William Eubank adapted Cthulhu to be the monster in Underwater was particularly creative.

Lovecraft did weave in some sociopolitical themes — controversially too, given some of his highly racist worldviews even by the standards of the era. However, creatures like Cthulhu weren't vehicles for a political message as they were in Underwater. H.P. Lovecraft preferred to use his monsters to explore the idea of terror of the unknown, specifically when it comes to existential timelessness. This is where the way William Eubank adapted Lovecraft's Cthulhu to be the monster in Underwater was particularly creative.

As Emily said when looking at the attacks from the underwater creatures, humans had continued to damage the Earth to the point where it was time for the planet to fight back. Since the planet can't fight on its own in this story, there was an elder god at the bottom of the ocean who could fight for the planet itself. This actually connects Cthulhu in Underwater to Lovecraft's themes. This is about the existential fear of the annihilation of the planet and the ocean fighting back against human intruders. The characters suffered and died but Tian Industries kept drilling into the Earth and now Cthulhu is there to make everyone pay.

The Monster In Underwater Wasn't Always Going To Be Cthulhu

The H.P. Lovecraft Monster Was A Last-Minute Addition To Underwater

Interestingly, while William Eubank was open about his love of Cthulhu and including him as the monster in Underwater, connecting the movie to H.P. Lovecraft was not the original plan. It was Brian Duffield who wrote the script, and in his script, the monster terrorizing the drilling crew was not Cthulhu. The script only called it a "Behemoth" and it was called that for around two years. However, when they started designing the monster in the post-production process, Eubank realized there was something more mythical going on and that is when he decided to bring Cthulhu into the Underwater movie (via Bloody Disgusting).

"Fortunately because we were working on the movie in order, we were able to shift the designs towards a darker, more Lovecraftian thing. When I started submitting designs for the Behemoth at the end, I was basically just telling the artists, ‘Alright, let’s make the Old One. Let’s get the boss of all bosses.’ It all worked. It’s so perfect."

The Connection Between The Creature In Underwater, Real Life, And Other Monster Media

Underwater's Modern Cthulhu Has Several Influences

The monster in Underwater is disturbing: gelatinous, pallid, and bony. It is a carefully designed creature that forms part of a long tradition of movie monsters and rings true to real life. Those who spend their time trawling the internet for images of what lies beneath the murky depths might recognize in the Underwater monster the elongated body of an oarfish, the wispy gelatin of a salp, the clouded eyes of a frilled shark, the needle-like teeth and vampire air of a fang tooth fish. Underwater clearly took several cues from Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror movie Alien.

In both Alien and Underwater, the respective crews initially encounter the monster in infant form: a creepy fetal creature unlike any ever witnessed before. It also borrows from Alien’s contrast of tight claustrophobic spaces against an agoraphobic vastness. The monster in Underwater expresses the same viciousness as Alien’s Xenomorph, an unrelenting threat of single-minded determination. The titles are similar, a single word that underlines the main threat of the movie: in Alien, the Xenomorph, in Underwater, the environment. It is measured in its homage to the classic sci-fi movie, taking inspiration, but presenting something new.

The actual monster of Underwater represents a threat of unprecedented scale, leaning into a more literary angle. It is a Gargantuan god, the design capitalizing on the potential of large cinema screens. With its tentacled face and threat of complete existential annihilation, this was Cthulhu in Underwater. A malevolent water god, Lovecraft describes it as follows: “a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.” Underwater took the amalgamation of all the audience’s worst fears about the ocean to new, otherworldly heights.