At this point in time, there have been so many films inspired by the universal fear of getting chomped up by sharks that the only way that any of them might have a hope of standing out from the rest is to bring something new to the concept (“Open Water,” “The Shallows,” the recent “Under Paris”; Hell, even the original “Sharknado”). The problem with “Deep Water” is not that it is a bad movie (which it is), but it’s a gratingly familiar one that doesn’t have a single point of interest to call its own. Instead, it prefers to spend two hours rehashing elements that even newbies to shark-based cinema will find devoid of any real inspiration.
Maybe the closest thing it comes to is that the sharks don’t actually make an appearance until the second half, with the first coming across more like a lesser “Airport” entry. We meet our dedicated cockpit crew, including near-retirement pilot and karaoke enthusiast Rich (Ben “BloodRayne” Kingsley) and his first officer, Ben (Aaron Eckhart), who has both a checkered professional career and a troubled home life he is trying to avoid by taking on long hauls. We also encounter a cross-section of the passengers booked for the trip, including a feisty grandmother (Kate Fitzpatrick), an awkward guy (Richard Crouchley) trying to impress one of the flight attendants, Cora (Molly Bell Wright), a girl who resents the fact that her dad has gotten remarried and she now has a young stepbrother, prophetically named Finn (Elijah Tamati), that she cannot stand.
Most significantly, there is Dan (Angus Sampson), who is pretty much the Ugliest American imaginable. He’s a loud, obnoxious, chain-smoking lout who hardly seems to notice that the electronics equipment he blithely shoves into the suitcase heading into the cargo hold is shooting off enough sparks to rival the efforts of Kenneth Strickfaden.
Over the ocean, the jerk’s bag finally catches fire, causing an explosion in the cargo bay that kicks off a chain reaction that eventually leads to a hole in the side of the plane and an engine on fire. Unable to make it to land, Rich and Ben go for a water landing that results in the plane busting up into a few chunks and all but about 30 of the 257 passengers dead.
With Rich out of commission, Ben is in charge and does what he can to get the life rafts out, hoping the distress signal was sent in time. Cora worries about the now-missing Finn, whom she was told to keep an eye on when her parents chose the worst possible time to recreate the money sequence from “Emmanuelle.” And good old Dan continues to be a pain in everyone’s ass. It is at this point, roughly an hour in, that a school of mako sharks shows up to start snacking on the human buffet while Ben tries to keep everyone alive until the rescue crews arrive…if they are coming, of course.
“Deep Water” is directed by Renny Harlin, who also directed “Deep Blue Sea,” another shark-based thriller that wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but which was done with a certain degree of cheerful energy—it knew that it was a super-cheesy thriller and leaned into the goofier elements instead of trying to take things too seriously.
Those elements are pretty much nonexistent here, unfortunately. As presented here by the four credited screenwriters, both the narrative and the characters are paper-thin; there is nothing to sustain real suspense, and even the occasional “BOO” moments where CGI sharks pop up to try to bite someone fail to inspire much fear. (Even the whole idea of a movie with sharks attacking plane crash victims was done just last year in the not-particularly-good “No Way Up.”)
The only time he seems to muster any real enthusiasm comes during the over-the-top crash sequence, and even there, it comes across more like a listless attempt to top the airborne carnage he depicted in “Die Hard 2.” As for the actors, the only one who makes any real impact is Sampson as the jerk passenger; it isn’t a matter of whether his character will eventually be devoured by a shark, but whether the other passengers will throw him into the water beforehand.
While there are indeed worse shark-related films out there than “Deep Water,” that says more about the generally parlous attempts to cash in on the popularity of “Jaws” over the last half-century than any merits that it might have. It is pretty much on the level of most VOD titles along the same lines to have emerged in the last few years—big, dumb, and eminently forgettable. The fact that it is getting theatrical distribution probably has more to do with the distributors hoping to lure in customers with no interest in seeing “The Devil Wears Prada 2” this weekend than any of its intrinsic qualities.
The best part comes early on, when Eckhart tries to calm down the nervous Cora before taking off, saying that hippos are more dangerous than flying in a plane. The dubious veracity of this claim aside, perhaps it will prompt the producers to take that notion to its logical conclusion and eventually give us “Hippos on a Plane.”
