This is the fifth post in the 90 from the 90s series, exploring underrated flicks from the great movie decade. To be eligible for this series, movies must have been released January 1, 1990 – December 31, 1999, and earned less than $20 million at the U.S. box office.

A superior court judge (Harvey Keitel) and his young wife (Cameron Diaz) vacation at her family’s Maine summer home, where they’re all alone—except for her childhood friend, Lance (Craig Sheffer), who lives nearby, and an unexpected stranger whose appearance rocks the bock.

Initial Reception

Head Above Water is one of those movies that barely made a sound on the big screen, never playing in more than 10 theaters and earning just $32K total at the domestic box office. The small number of people who have seen it likely caught it late at night on HBO.

Standout Player

It’s all Diaz, all day.

Key Moment

Diaz’s character, Nathalie, sits on a boat launch. Her hands tied, her feet in cement. Like a game of Mouse Trap, she uses a long hook to reach a gun to shoot a water bottle that tips a board that allows a chainsaw to slide to her. She then hangs the chainsaw from a hook, starts it, only to have it spin wildly and cut off the top of the boat launch… with deadly consequences.

Killer Line

“I eat the best sausage so I keep it in the best box.”

Achilles’ Heal

It’s painful to say, but it’s Keitel. He doesn’t singlehandedly sink the movie (there’s a lot wrong here), but almost nothing he does works. When he’s playing nice, it feels like someone’s feeding him lines. When he turns into an asshole, he feels inhibited (where’s the Bad Lieutenant?). Worst of all, not for a millisecond do him and Diaz ever seem like a believable couple.

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Why This Movie Still Matters

Let’s start here: This movie is bad. Not in a completely unwatchable way. More in a “how is that car even running?” kind of way. Almost every part of it is not up to snuff.

It feels like it was directed by someone with a concussion (that someone: Dances With Wolves producer Jim Wilson, making his directing debut). The movie starts with bad ADR and ends with an iris shot (fading into a shrinking circle) where it’s unclear what we’re supposed to be looking at. Simple things like insert shots are boggled.

The script isn’t much help either. This is a contained movie with only five characters and none of them have anything interesting to say. You might even say it has four characters because Craig Sheffer’s Lance barely registers as a human being. And you know you’re in trouble when even Billy Zane can’t stir things up.

Despite all that, Head Above Water does have one thing going for it: Cameron Diaz. This is Diaz in her mid-90s climb to the top of Hollywood, when she was cutting her teeth on oddball indie fare. Along with being a magnetic screen presence, she might have been the best looking person in the world at this point.

Diaz’s IMDB during the Head Above Water period is super interesting. After debuting in 1994 with The Mask (which made more than $100 million at the U.S. box office during Jim Carrey’s historic three-movie heater), she rolled off a series of low-budget movies (mostly comedic, mostly dark)—The Last Supper (1995), She’s The One (1996), Feeling Minnesota (1996), Head Above Water (1996), and Keys to Tulsa (1997)—before hitting the big time in ‘97-’98.

While we may think of Diaz mostly as the bubbly presence from hits like Charlie’s Angels (2000), her 90s indie flicks may be more in line with the material she’s actually interested in—a little darker and more offbeat than we probably give her credit for (her resume is peppered with these movies, from Very Bad Things to The Box to The Counselor).

Unfortunately, in Head Above Water, she doesn’t have a lot to work with. The what-to-do-with-a-dead-body plot mixed with twisting relationship dynamics promises a lot more fun than it delivers (mostly because the movie tries to play it tame when it should be sexy, subversive, and violent).

But watching a blisteringly hot Diaz run around the Maine coastline trying to anchor this sinking black comedy is a reminder of what a star she was—which she would prove to the world two years later with another dark, offbeat summer comedy (this one a smash hit): There’s Something About Mary.

Quick Takes

The movie is based on the 1993 Norwegian movie Hodet Over Vannet. Nils Gaup, the director of the original, said about it: “Twice Hollywood has remade my films, and both times they have managed to make the worst movie ever.” (The other Gaup is referencing is 1987’s Ofelas, remade in 2007 as Pathfinder with Karl Urban).
Though she has four Golden Globe nominations, Diaz has never received an Academy Award nomination. He closest calls were probably Being John Malkovich (1999) and Vanilla Sky (2001). If there was any justice in the world (and the Academy respected comedies), Diaz would not only have been nominated for There’s Something About Mary, she would have won.
Craig Sheffer may be a net negative as an actor (or at best a net neutral). He’s been in some decent-to-pretty-good movies (Some Kind of Wonderful, Nightbreed, A River Runs Through It) and he’s unexceptional in all of them. Maybe that’s his gift (being a void), but I’m hard-pressed to think of any movie that wouldn’t be better with another actor in his place.

MOVIE TIMES

90 from the 90s: Head Above Water (1996)