Netflix's 'Dive Club' Review: Cringey teen drama is a shallow deep sea adventure
This review contains spoilers for 'Dive Club'
Picturesque location. Check. Talented cast. check. Stunning cinematography. Check. Yet, 'Dive Club', the Aussie teen series that originally premiered as a movie-length special earlier this May and later distributed by Netflix fails to be gripping thanks to the plot's storylines that form a complex knot.
With too much focus on the supporting storylines, the larger picture sort of gets buried at sea. And as bad as Dwayne Johnson's 'Baywatch' is, it is still a better flick to watch if your Friday calls for something balderdash-y. Or better yet, if teen dramas are your thing, 'Riverdale' maybe garners a tad more attention. Better yet, just watch 'Money Heist.'
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The plot is pretty straightforward. Cape Mercy has a group of passionate teens who also happen to be expert divers. They have their share of adventures testing what the sea has in store. The first episode sets the tone when one of the girls, Lauren (Georgia-May Davis), goes missing with her boat Indy on a stormy evening. It's almost as if the sea has swallowed her whole. The other teens, Maddie (Mia Madden), Stevie (Sana'a Shaik), Anna (Aubri Ibrag), and Izzie (Mercy Cornwall) make it their life's mission to find their missing pal.
As they hunt about for clues, they find her cellphone, intact and sealed tight at the bottom of the sea containing a cryptic video. Lauren says she has found "something" and her life was in danger. For the next eleven painfully tiring episodes, the teens find various jewelry and artifacts while searching for the vanished-into-thin-air teen. The larger plotline also has hidden treasure, Salvation Day as the backdrop for the story, and a Russian family residing on Cape Mercy who make for bad villains. They happen to be Anna's grandmum and that later becomes a major piece of the puzzle.
The final episodes are better paced as the search for Lauren gets frantic. The teens follow multiple clues till they finally find their friend stashed away in one of the houses on the cape. The identity of her kidnapper is withheld till the last minute and the final chapter ends in a cliffhanger. Lauren is safe, but the adventure isn't over yet.
Honestly, the storylines that blend some flashback and rich history could have been explained better, and for gosh sakes, who talks about breaking up with their boyfriends after they rescue a missing person who looks pretty traumatized, and yet eagerly forgetting that she and her friends are not out of the woods yet.
The supporting characters do their best to blend in but are quickly forgotten as the episodes just jump from one scene to another, giving less time for them to actually develop as characters on screen. Pity there's a season 2 in the offing because this teen drama's just a shallow adventure in the deep seas.
'Dive Club' is currently streaming on Netflix.
