A submariner’s review of Apple’s ‘Submerged’ for Apple Vision Pro

I’ve been here at AppleInsider for about eight years. Some of you know what I did in the nineties. Most of you don’t.

Dear reader, your author was in the US Navy between 1991 and 1999. Five of those years were spent rated as a machinist mate serving as a boiler and reactor chemist on the USS Hyman G. Rickover (SSN-709). At the time, Rickover was a Los Angeles class submarine that was then based out of Norfolk, Virginia.

It’s razor blades now, and a new Rickover was commissioned a year ago.

If the hull number seems vaguely familiar, the USS Dallas, featured in , was virtually identical to Rickover in the real world.

This is me, in 1997, in the Groton, Connecticut submarine flood trainer in 1997. I had a few deployments under my belt already at this point.

To get ahead of the question, that flange in front of me pumped 10,000 gallons per minute. There is a poor soul underneath this plume of water holding the nut attached to the other end of this bolt, so I can apply what we colloquially called “star torque” to the bolt to seal off this flange.

Author Mike Wuerthele in a submarine flood trainer in 1997

Bonafides established, let’s discuss Submerged.

Submerged is a 16-minute short film for the Apple Vision Pro headset, in Apple’s own Immersive Movie format. It tells the story of a World War II submarine crew fighting to survive a torpedo attack.

Apple says that the Immersive Video format “leverages 3D video recorded in 8K with a 180-degree field of view and Spatial Audio to transport viewers to the center of the action.”

‘Submerged’ practical set – credit Apple

So far, the other Immersive Movies are documentaries, or sports reels. This is Apple’s first run at drama using the format.

Submerged was written and directed by Academy Award winner Edward Berger. Berger has several German credits, but is mostly known recently for All Quiet on the Western Front. It is not lost on me that like your author, he too is 54.

The movie is protected. As such, screen caps aren’t possible, regretfully. This is a shame, but on the other hand, much of the detail and all of the immersiveness would be lost.

Anyway, the film covers the last war patrol of a Balao class submarine, and the lives — and deaths — of some of the crew.

Rickover was more than 360 feet long, and 33 feet across. We had space, but with over 120 men on board typically, and more than half the boat dedicated to non-sleepable engineering space, we didn’t have a lot.

I am a Cold War vet. That’s an entirely different environment, and a different tension than World War II.

The souls on those World War II Balao class boats had it far rougher, in a smaller boat with less operational space — and diesel engines versus nuclear power making all the air your can breathe and all the water you can drink without fear of running out of fuel. Those fleet boats were 311 feet long with much of that bow space, and 27 feet across.

Submerged is mercifully brief. I say “merciful” not because the media and portrayal is bad, but it’s so good and incredibly, profoundly, stressful. The Apple Vision Pro is an incredible media delivery tool demonstrating how claustrophobic submarines are.

And it gets worse when the patrol goes bad. At some point, a surface destroyer depth-charges the Swordfish, and all hell breaks loose.

Scroll back up to my flood trainer picture. There’s a reason I included it.

While not stated as such, the number two torpedo tube doors break after a close-aboard explosion, flooding and ultimately sinking the boat. The skill of the director, and the craftsmanship of the practical set demonstrate the terror of water rushing into your fragile air tank, 400 feet under the water with 170 pounds per square inch crushing your boat, as the preface to the video makes clear.

The moment things go bad — Credit – Apple

In my own training and practical experience it’s better if you find the water coming into the boat, or you find the fire before the smoke finds you. The Submerged crew didn’t have that luxury.

It’s not shown, but some of the crew certainly died. For the rest, there’s an uncertain ending. They end the film, adrift on the open ocean, theoretically close to shore, since the submarine was resting on the bottom in probably 500 feet of water, allowing them to swim out the escape trunk to the surface.

But, that destroyer lurks, and they’re clearly in hostile waters. Knowing this, I scanned the horizon for that destroyer. It wasn’t there, but the Apple Vision Pro was happy to pan the field of vision to let me look.

It’s been said that warfare is “an affair of months of boredom, punctuated by moments of terror.” That was certainly true of Cold War submarine deployments, and the inverse was likely true of World War II patrols.

Submerged gives a 15-minute sample of that terror, incredibly effectively. After watching, after the crew escape, I felt a shadow of long-ago post-crisis adrenaline depleting, which is high praise for the film, the hardware, the cast, and the crew.

Lower resolution screens in competing headsets would have been able to show some of this, but the environment was made so visceral by the headset. Even the smallest irrelevant detail was clear, like nameplates on doors.

If you watch, pair the Apple Vision Pro with your Spatial Audio-capable AirPods, you won’t be sorry.

This is Apple’s first more-or-less fictional Immersive Video. While I am not a fan of the headset ecosystem as it stands today overall, I am a fan of what the future may bring, with this delivery method. I am obviously a fan of this subject matter.

If you own an Apple Vision Pro, watch it. If you can borrow one, it’s worth 15 minutes of your day.

I’ll be watching it again.