My quick rating – 3.9/10. The Drowned sets up a promising mix of crime thriller and aquatic folklore, but ultimately drifts too long in shallow waters. After pulling off an art heist, three thieves hole up in a remote coastal safe house, only to find their fourth missing. The setup suggests paranoia, mistrust, and maybe even a lurking myth waking beneath the tide. Instead, what we get is 84 minutes of wondering if anything is ever going to actually happen.
Writer/director Samuel Clemens clearly intended to weave in siren mythology, but the execution is… murky. Rather than hypnotic singing, the victims in this film are blasted with overwhelming soundwaves, and so are we. The movie leans heavily on amped-up audio shocks that are supposed to feel unsettling, but mostly just grow tiring and repetitive. It’s a stylistic swing that might’ve worked once or twice, but the constant barrage becomes the film’s biggest distraction.
Most of the runtime focuses on the three thieves trapped with three conveniently stranded women who show up without explanation and are immediately down for sex. Suspicious? Yes. Believable? Not even slightly. But to be fair, the movie has a consistent theme: men are idiots, and no mythological song is needed to make us that way. The film wants this dynamic to create tension, but with so little dialogue and so much staring into the middle distance, the suspense never quite builds into anything satisfying.
The heist itself is explained only through scattered flashbacks, and even once pieced together, it doesn’t amount to much. The eventual “mysterious” ending feels less like a twist and more like, “Well… we’ve reached the 80-minute mark, time to wrap it up.” It’s not so much ambiguous as it is incomplete – a conclusion that seems required simply so the movie can stop.
To its credit, The Drowned isn’t a total wash. For an indie production, the cinematography is surprisingly good, with some moody coastal shots that echo classic horror atmosphere. The isolated setting is perfect for the story’s intentions, even if the story itself doesn’t fully take advantage of it. The cast, all unfamiliar faces to me, all do solid work with what little dialogue they’re given. Sandrine Salyères stands out as Noe, the so-called “princess” of the group, and Michelangelo Fortuzzi’s Paul feels like the only character with an active brain cell among the thieves.
It’s not the worst low-budget thriller out there, and the production values show real potential, but the near-total lack of momentum or payoff is going to sink it for most viewers. With its 2023 stamp and eventual 2025 release, it clearly took a long time to wash ashore on streaming, and for many, that may be the most intriguing mystery it has to offer.
