What Lies Below Budget

What Is the Budget of What Lies Below (2020)?

What Lies Below (2020), written and directed by Braden R. Duemmler in his feature debut, was produced on an estimated budget of approximately $2,000,000. The figure has not been formally disclosed, but the contained three-character primary ensemble, the single-location lakeside cabin setting, and the indie-thriller craft package all support a figure in the low-millions range typical of Vertical Entertainment acquisitions in the contemporary low-to-mid-budget indie thriller tier.

The film was produced by Stage 6 Films and Lake Boy Productions with Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions handling worldwide distribution through the Vertical Entertainment partnership. Vertical released the film on demand and in select theaters on December 4, 2020, in the heart of the pandemic-era VOD-thriller release cycle. The Netflix global pickup that followed in early 2021 drove the film's primary audience reach.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

The estimated $2,000,000 budget covered a contained, lakeside-cabin, three-character indie thriller with a deliberately compressed location footprint:

• Above-the-Line Talent: Mena Suvari, Ema Horvath, and Trey Tucker anchored the three-character primary ensemble at indie-thriller rates. Mena Suvari brought post-American Beauty profile, and Ema Horvath contributed an emerging-talent rate appropriate to her pre-The Rings of Power career stage. Braden R. Duemmler took a feature-debut writer-director rate.
• Lakeside Cabin Production: Principal photography took place across a contained lakeside-cabin location footprint, with the single primary setting allowing the production to operate efficiently within the indie-thriller schedule. The contained location supported the screenplay's claustrophobic mother-daughter-stepfather chamber-thriller structure.
• Cinematography: Director of photography Cody Jacobs shot the film in the cool, dusk-lit register appropriate to the lakeside-cabin thriller setting, with extended water-and-shoreline sequences anchoring the visual register.
• Sound Design and Practical Water Effects: The screenplay's water-bound creature premise required elaborate sound design, practical water effects, and limited CG augmentation for the climactic confrontation. The water-effects package across underwater and surface-water photography was a meaningful line item.
• Score and Music: Composer Andrew Morgan Smith delivered an original score that anchored the film's thriller register. Music supervision across the indie-thriller needle drops added a modest musical-package cost.
• Post-Production and Vertical Delivery: Editorial, color, sound mix, and the Vertical Entertainment delivery package completed the finishing pipeline ahead of the December 4, 2020 VOD release.

How Does What Lies Below's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

What Lies Below sits firmly within the Vertical Entertainment and indie-VOD-thriller tier alongside comparable contemporary peers:

• The Boy Behind the Door (2020): Budget approximately $1,500,000 | Worldwide Shudder release. The Tigers Are Not Afraid producers' contained kidnapping thriller at roughly 75% of the What Lies Below budget offers the closest indie-thriller economic peer.
• Crawl (2019): Budget approximately $13,500,000 | Worldwide $91,408,256. Alexandre Aja's Paramount water-creature thriller at nearly seven times the What Lies Below budget illustrates the upper-tier creature-thriller economic register and demonstrates the breakout potential the pandemic-VOD release model foreclosed.
• Underwater (2020): Budget approximately $50,000,000 | Worldwide $40,910,000. William Eubank's 20th Century Studios deep-sea creature thriller at 25 times the What Lies Below budget illustrates the studio-tentpole creature-thriller scale.
• The Cabin in the Woods (2011): Budget approximately $30,000,000 | Worldwide $66,486,080. Drew Goddard's Lionsgate cabin thriller at 15 times the What Lies Below budget illustrates the cabin-thriller studio-scale economic register.

What Lies Below Box Office Performance

What Lies Below was released on demand and in select theaters by Vertical Entertainment on December 4, 2020, in the heart of the pandemic-era VOD-thriller release cycle. The limited theatrical footprint earned approximately $48,000 worldwide. The film became a Netflix global Top 10 hit in spring 2021, after the platform picked up streaming rights, driving the film's primary audience reach. Vertical did not separately disclose the VOD revenue.

Because the primary commercial windows were VOD and Netflix streaming, the standard six-bullet breakdown applies in a hybrid form:

• Production Budget: approximately $2,000,000
• Estimated Prints & Advertising (P&A): approximately $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 (Vertical VOD launch and pandemic-era limited theatrical marketing)
• Total Estimated Investment: approximately $3,000,000 to $4,000,000
• Worldwide Theatrical Gross: approximately $48,000
• Net Return: recovered through Vertical VOD revenue and the Netflix global streaming pickup in spring 2021
• ROI: not separately reported; the Netflix Top 10 ranking constituted the primary success metric

The film became one of Netflix's most-watched US originals in March 2021 after the platform's streaming pickup, with the pandemic-era streaming surge driving viewership well beyond what the limited theatrical and VOD windows would have supported. The Netflix pickup represented the film's primary commercial success.

What Lies Below Production History

What Lies Below originated as Braden R. Duemmler's feature debut screenplay, drawing on contemporary water-and-creature thriller traditions and the broader claustrophobic-cabin chamber-thriller register. Stage 6 Films and Lake Boy Productions developed the project across 2018 and 2019. Principal photography took place across a contained lakeside-cabin location footprint, with the single primary setting allowing the production to operate efficiently within the indie-thriller schedule.

Mena Suvari took the role of Michelle, the mother, with Ema Horvath as her teenage daughter Liberty and Trey Tucker as John Smith, the new boyfriend who arrives at the lakeside cabin. The film completed post-production through 2019 and 2020, with the VOD-thriller release window calibrated to the pandemic-era release-strategy adjustments that drove many 2020 indie thrillers to VOD-first release models.

Vertical Entertainment, in partnership with Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, released the film on demand and in select theaters on December 4, 2020. Netflix picked up streaming rights in early 2021, with the global Netflix launch in spring 2021 driving the film's primary audience reach and entering the platform's Top 10 in the US for multiple weeks.

Awards and Recognition

What Lies Below received limited industry awards recognition. The film was nominated for the 2021 Saturn Award for Best Direct-to-Video Genre Film, in recognition of the VOD-thriller release strategy and the film's pandemic-era distribution model. Major Academy Award, Golden Globe, or Independent Spirit Award nominations did not materialize, reflecting the film's contained scale, VOD-first release strategy, and the indie-thriller genre positioning. Within the VOD-thriller category the film operated as commercial programming that found its audience through the Netflix streaming pickup rather than through the awards-positioning tier.

Critical Reception

What Lies Below received mixed reviews. The film holds a 67% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on roughly 27 critic reviews, with a critical consensus that praised Ema Horvath's central performance and the screenplay's claustrophobic register while citing the third-act resolution as a weakness. Metacritic did not aggregate a score given the limited critical sample. CinemaScore did not poll the film given its VOD-only release.

Critics broadly praised Ema Horvath's lead performance, the claustrophobic three-character chamber-thriller structure, and Trey Tucker's deliberately unsettling supporting work. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film "earns its early-thriller register through Ema Horvath's confident lead performance, even when the screenplay struggles to deliver on the creature-thriller premise in the third act," and Variety praised the film as "a low-budget indie thriller that exploits its single-location setting and contained ensemble to genuine claustrophobic effect." Common reservations cited a third-act creature-confrontation resolution some critics argued could not deliver on the slow-build first two acts and a screenplay that some reviewers found over-reliant on body-horror imagery in lieu of dramatic stakes. The mixed but generally positive reception reflected the film's commercial-programming positioning within the VOD-thriller tier.