7 Water Horror Movies to Plummet Into
Water is deadly.
People go missing or lose bits of themselves or find themselves face-to-face with something unfathomable, a creature like something out of a … well, out of a horror movie.
Shark horror movies are a category all their own, and there are plenty of them, but water horror is not just about sharks.
Oceans and lakes are deep – so deep, we haven’t yet seen the bottom of some of them. Rivers run fast – dragging the living and the dead with them as they forge their unstoppable paths. Aquatic monsters are big and small – some we probably still don’t even know about.
You won’t find sharks in this list. But you will find things in the water and the water itself playing its deadly games.
Plummet into this selection of water horror movies and feel the power of nature as it drenches you in terror.
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Table of Contents
Underwater (2020)
Sci-fi creature water horror
A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep-sea drilling company try to get to safety after an earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
The five remaining crew members are attacked by unknown creatures as they try to escape the facility by walking across the ocean floor to another abandoned facility, hoping to be able to access escape pods there.
Directed by William Eubank
Below (2002)
Supernatural water horror
“Six hundred feet beneath the surface terror runs deep.”
During World War 2, U.S. Navy submarine U.S.S. Tiger Shark picks up three survivors from a British hospital ship sunk by a German U-boat.
During a number of encounters with a German destroyer, the submarine suffers damage and the Commanding Officer kills one of the survivors, accusing him of being a German spy who has been betraying their position to the destroyer.
Following this incident, everyone on board the submarine starts to experience supernatural events, a series of mechanical problems begins, and the submarine seems to develop its own idea of where to head.
Directed by David Twohy
Piranha (1978)
Creature comedy water horror
“Lost River Lake was a thriving resort until they discovered…”
Two teenagers skinny dipping in a holding pool at an abandoned military compound are attacked and killed by unseen creatures.
The people sent to find the missing teenagers find the compound and drain the holding pool into the nearby river, unaware that they’ve just released a ravenous school of genetically-engineered piranha.
Heading for the open ocean, the piranha decide to stop in at a local resort for a feast on their way.
Directed by Joe Dante
Sea Fever (2019)
Creature isolation water horror
”Unchartered. Undiscovered. Until now…”
An Irish trawler traversing an isolated exclusion zone runs into an unknown object and the crew finds themselves marooned.
They discover they are caught in the tentacles of an enormous bio-luminescent creature. The creature ultimately releases the boat, but the crew is unaware that it has left something behind.
Crew members begin to die and they discover that their water supply has been contaminated by deadly parasitic larvae.
Directed by Neasa Hardiman
Crawl (2019)
Alligator water horror
“They were here first.”
A Category 5 cyclone is heading for Florida, so Haley goes to check on her estranged father but he’s not at his condo.
She heads out to their old family home, which is in a flood-prone area, and finds him unconscious in the crawl space of the house.
As the house begins to flood, her exits are cut off by huge alligators.
Directed by Alexandre Aja
Pressure (2015)
Survival horror
“Hold your breath”
Four men head are sent down in a diving bell in the ocean off Somalia to fix a damaged oil pipe.
As they are ascending, a storm hits the ship and the diving bell cables break, sending the pod back down to the ocean floor.
With a limited oxygen supply, the men have to try to get back to the surface and get rescued, while the oil company leaves them to die.
Directed by Ron Scalpello
Sphere (1998)
Sci-fi water horror
“Terror can fill every space.”
A team of experts head to a state-of-the-art underwater living environment to investigate a spaceship that’s been discovered under three hundred years’ worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.
The ship’s computer logs suggest a mission that originated either in the future or in the distant past. The last entry in the logs mentions an unknown event.
During their exploration of the ship, the team discovers a large, impenetrable, perfect sphere hovering in the cargo bay.
Directed by Barry Levinson
Published: 2 February 2024
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