Trapped in a Submarine: Claustrophobia for Breakfast

Is it worth your time?

If you like movies that keep the scale small and the stakes high, yeah, watch it. If you need explosions every five minutes or big, sweeping vistas, you are going to be bored to tears. This is for the folks who like to feel a bit cramped while watching a screen.

There is this moment about halfway through where the water starts leaking in. It isn't some big, flashy CGI disaster. It’s just this thin, pathetic little stream of water. It’s genuinely unnerving. You can almost hear the metal groaning under the pressure.

The pacing is a bit weird, honestly. Sometimes it feels like they’re waiting around for the plot to happen. Then, out of nowhere, everyone is shouting and moving in a panic. It feels like real life, where you spend hours doing nothing and then suddenly everything is on fire.

The Diving Gear Thing

They put a lot of focus on this new diving-lung technology. I kept waiting for it to fail, just because that’s how these movies usually go. It’s a bit dry—literally—but the desperation in the actors' faces sells it. You don't need a massive budget when the guy next to you looks like he’s actually terrified of drowning.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Trapped in a Submarine (1932) through its definitive frames.

• The sound design is mostly just dripping water. It gets under your skin.
• Some of the dialogue feels like it was written in a rush. Still, it works.
• The crew feels like a group of regular guys, not movie stars.

It’s not as polished as something like Mickey's Winners, but it has a different kind of energy. It’s more… grim. There’s no heroics here, just a bunch of people trying to breathe.

Sometimes the camera just hangs on someone’s face for way too long. It’s probably meant to show their internal struggle or whatever, but it mostly just made me feel like I was intruding on a private moment. It’s a bit awkward, but in a way that actually adds to the tension.

I wouldn't call this a masterpiece or anything. It’s just a solid, sweaty little movie about being stuck in a metal tube. Sometimes that’s enough. Also, I don't know why, but the way they handle the radio comms is surprisingly gripping. It’s all static and bad news. 🌊

If you enjoy this, you might also find the pacing of The Unwritten Law a bit more familiar, even if the setting is worlds apart.