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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 17, 2002
Below (R) spins a nifty yarn about the USS Tiger Shark, a submarine that is, in a word, haunted. The sub, cruising the mid-Atlantic for Nazi vessels in 1943, is subject to some strange goings-on.
Director David Twohy (Pitch Black) casually slams together several genres, juxtaposing haunted-house horror with war movie and a touch of Shakespearean tragedy. Perhaps the Tiger Shark's problem is the ghostly vengeance of the former captain, who died in a mysterious accident. Another thought, even more eerie: Everyone aboard the sub already is dead. Or maybe the paranoia is simply the result of oxygen deprivation, claustrophobia and combat stress.
Below, the second submarine movie of the year, following Kathryn Bigelow's K-19, is scrappier and more fun than its big-budget competition. And it's a rarity among contemporary ghost stories, the majority of which rely on overblown special effects and/or gore: Twohy delivers genuine chills. B+