It seems January has become a good time for horror movies that don't find a place in the early fall. Last weekend we had the new version of The Grudge, and this weekend gives us a deep sea scare in the form of Underwater, a film that shows us star Kristen Stewart as we have never seen her before, with almost no hair.
While Stewart's 'do is frequently fairly short, in Underwater, her head is shaved almost down to nothing. CinemaBlend's own Jeff McComb, himself follically-challenged, asked Stewart about the choice to go with the short hair, and the actress described the hair as "dope" because she apparently wanted to cut her hair, and this movie gave her an excuse, as the character had every reason to have buzzed her hair.
Check out Stewart's comments in the video below.
Kristen Stewart's character in Underwater is named Nora Price and she's a mechanical engineer on a deep sea oil rig that's drilling seven miles under the ocean's surface. While the movie never specifically tells you how long the crew has been down there, though, the trailer states the crew is down at the bottom for a month at a time, one assumes that life on bottom of the ocean can be a bit brutal. So the style options make some sense. Are you really going to fill your small suitcase with a lot of hair styling products?
Kristen Stewart tells CinemaBlend that her character is very practical, and so cutting her hair short is one of those practical choices. You're simply not going to want to worry about your hair when you're in a cramped undersea environment like that for long periods. Depending on how long Nora has been down there, you can imagine her hair may have been even shorter when she first went down.
It was probably a somewhat practical decision for the film as well. The characters in Underwater spend a large portion of the movie wearing large diving suits and wearing one of those with long hair just feels like it would be a nightmare. You can't exactly brush it out of your face while you're wearing the suit.
As Kristen Stewart also says, the hair may also be something of a symbol of the way Nora's character has evolved. We see photograph's of her in Underwater which show that the buzz cut has not been a constant thing for her. It hints at her character and her history, something which gets revealed over the course of the movie.
While The Grudge didn't bring in a massive audience last weekend, perhaps a horror movie with a significantly different setting, and with Kristen Stewart in the lead, will be more what audiences are looking for. Underwater opens on Friday.
