Deep Blue Sea

Image credit: Wikipedia

Can the weight of words ever really cease to be a surprise to anyone? We know that words have the power to wound, support, inspire, and confuse; but they can’t do these things alone. The real weight of words comes from the people who say them and the relationships that these people have with the people they are saying them to. This philosophical train of thought was inspired by the latest film that I have added to my cinematic history.

Deep Blue Sea is not a film that I particularly had much interest in watching until the coagulation of a content creator I enjoy praised it on a particularly entertaining videogame stream and the fact that my partner and I have enjoyed many a cosy night on the couch with dumb eco horror films. But this was the film that broke Partner and my cinematic drought over the weekend.

In an isolated research facility in the middle of the ocean, a group of scientists are trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Their test subjects: sharks. Success is just within reach until a disastrous turn of events that sees the sharks, now made smarter and vengeful thanks to the scientific process, escape from captivity and viciously attack with the aim to drag the entire facility and all its workers down into the deep blue sea.

Of course, this movie is no Jaws: no fresh and groundbreaking piece of cinema that boosts the genre of eco horror up a couple of notches. It is merely a fun sci-fi eco horror with a hunter/prey survival narrative that takes minimal brain power to follow and promises an hour+ of mindless enjoyment. Think Alien, but with a trio of sharks and nowhere near as good.

Within the narrative and environmental confines of a survival story in a rapidly sinking ‘ship’ we have a relatively enjoyable motley crew of characters experiencing the terror of being hunted by something that promises to deliver a gruesome and painful death as well as the breakdown of professional and social relationships under pressure. The performances are all fine, but nothing to write home about: with the characters only being minutely established, thus eradicating any real audience relationships being formed with them and putting the pressure and payoff into the lingering, hunter shots, POV sequences, and jump-scares.

Image credit: IMDb

The real fun of the movie comes in the form of trying to guess who’s going to be eaten next, but there are a number of fun and original ways in which the characters attempt to fight back. Deep Blue Sea is a just a rather enjoyable shark movie.

Director: Renny Harlin, 1999

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Aida Turturro, Stellan Skarsgard, & LL Cool J