One has to give it up to Renny Harlin; he knows what his audience expects from him and he usually delivers it. A filmmaker who has been making entertaining schlock for decades, Harlin’s movies were integral to my love of movies growing up. How many times did I watch Cliffhanger and Ford Fairlane? Quite a lot. But there was also 1999’s Deep Blue Sea, a ridiculously trashy hunk of chum about super-smart sharks trying to eat LL Cool J or something. It’s a cult classic for a reason; and undoubtedly Harlin gets asked about it all of the time. Perhaps that’s part of the reason he took on another shark movie, Deep Water, as a knowing wink to all of those fans nostalgic for his brand of over-the-top survival movie.
The truth is that Deep Water has been in the works for well over a decade. Originally planned as a sequel to 2012’s Bait 3D, the film was scrapped in 2014 for being too similar to a real-life tragedy, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. It sat on the shelf for years until Gene Simmons, yeah THAT Gene Simmons, teamed up with another producer to make Deep Water the first film in their new production banner. The only disappointing thing is that we don’t get Simmons on screen punching a Great White in the nose or anything.
Harlin was brought on at that point, and following the lukewarm reception to his The Strangers trilogy, it’s a welcome return to form and a more sizable production. Deep Water is led by Aaron Eckhart as a First Officer for Northeastern Airlines which, judging by the looks of it, might be a spinoff of the bankrupt Spirit Airlines. Ben Kingsley is his Captain, a cynical ladies’ man who loves karaoke and hitting on the young flight attendants who…apparently think he’s charming? Eckhart is a bit of a rebel, which is why he’s never achieved Captain status despite his age. A young girl, Cora, played by impressive Omaha actress Molly Belle Wright (who I interviewed last week), has something smart to say about it, too, but Eckhart tells her life is full of “diversions” and this is one of them. They’ll be facing another major diversion on a flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai.
In true disaster movie fashion, we’re whipped quickly through the passenger list to draw the thinnest of emotional connections to them. I have to say, old people and Americans come off looking terribly in this. There’s an American sports team with a hotheaded teammate who drunkenly gropes a woman from a Chinese team, only for her best friend and crush to get bullied for defending her. Then there’s Dan, played by Insidious actor Angus Sampson, who’s one of those aggressively hostile, entitled passengers who belittle the staff, smoke in the non-smoking areas, and sneak an electronic device in his baggage that, shocker, overheats and causes the plane to explode.
Plane crashes are always thrilling, but a Renny Harlin-directed plane crash is chaotic devastation to the point of becoming its own horror movie. It’s not enough that holes are blown in the plane and passengers sucked right out into the sky, but everything, and I mean everything, comes dislodged and begins flying around the cabin. The beverage cart has never been so dangerous, as bottles and everything that isn’t nailed down hurtle through the air to smash into passengers’ faces. An attempt to land in Guam goes awry, and they are forced to make a crash landing in the middle of the ocean. Of the 257 people aboard, roughly 30 of them survive, the waters thick with corpses.
All of that blood in the water? It’s like somebody ringing the dinner bell to a bunch of hungry sharks. The plane is in pieces, life rafts are in the water, and everyone is scrambling to get aboard SOMETHING in order to survive. The old people, God bless ’em, are quick to sacrifice themselves for the next generation. Okay, maybe they don’t come off so terribly, after all. Kingsley’s character is kind of a douche, and there’s an old lady who calls her seatmate a “5” because he’s got a thing for one of the hot young stewardesses. She’s kind of an a-hole, too, but she does look out for the kiddos when the time comes. Dan is still a prick, though, and clearly a believer in “every man for himself” when it comes to lifeboat etiquette.
Harlin doesn’t mess around and try to make Deep Water something that it’s not. Mako sharks are swarming, and when you see one, it’s only a matter of time until someone gets a bit taken out of them. Harlin serves up passengers like fish food, making this a more gory experience than a high-tension thriller. The performances are nothing to write home about, but Eckhart and Wright share a couple of poignant scenes together, as Cora handles the guilt of shunning her new stepbrother and stepmom, both now missing and presumed dead. Her situation forces Eckhart’s character to reevaluate his own domestic struggles. It’s not much, but it’s something. Deep Water isn’t Jaws; it’s not even Open Water, but if watching sharks on a feeding frenzy is your thing, you could do a lot worse.
Deep Water opens in theaters on May 1st.
