Deep Water review

By Terry Sherwood

After more than fifty years of Jaws imitators, any shark film faces an immediate challenge: how do you make audiences fear the ocean again? The answer usually lies in a fresh angle. The giant animals like Shark Exorcist, Cruel Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, Under Paris and The Shallows even the absurd Sharknado series understood that embracing outrageousness could distinguish it from the pack. Renny Harlin’s directed Deep Water attempts a different hook by combining an air disaster with a shark attack movie, On paper, it sounds like an irresistible B-movie premise. Unfortunately, while the setup is promising, the execution never rises above competent familiarity.

 Opening like a traditional 1970s disaster picture like Airport 75 than a horror film. A commercial flight to Shanghai introduces a gallery of passengers, each carrying a small personal drama. Aaron Eckhart plays troubled first officer Ben, a capable pilot haunted by problems at home, while Ben Kingsley some presence like Charlton Heston would play  as veteran captain Richard, whose karaoke enthusiasm for Frank Sinatra tries to ground the film (No pun) some poster /box office appeal and likely a  good paycheck with some travel.  John Carradine once remarked that these films let him “see the world’ and all he wanted later in life was a crate of his favourite whiskey as payment 

A young couple who wants to join the “Mile High club” A rebellious teenage girl forced to care for her young stepbrother, an awkward young man attempting to impress a flight attendant, a grandmother with plenty of opinions, rival Video gaming teams, and Dan, played with relish by Angus Sampson, perhaps the most obnoxious passenger ever to board an aircraft. His character replaces the minister with lost faith that takes to the bottle in this case its cigarettes. 

Dan has carelessly packed electronic equipment ignites a fire in the cargo hold, triggering a catastrophic chain of events that culminates in the planes CGI destruction. Exploding engines, passengers sucked through a ruptured fuselage, collapsing interiors, and the desperate attempt to execute a water landing provide genuine thrills not seen in those other   seventies disaster films. 

The CGI sharks themselves do not arrive until roughly halfway through the film, and when they do, they never become the overwhelming menace the advertising promises. Instead of embracing creature-feature thrills, Ben lets a flight attendant swim to wreckage then when she meets and  end  suddenly pulls out life rafts, separated survivors struggle to reunite, trapped passengers search for escape routes inside the wreckage, and emotional subplots continue long after viewers have stopped caring about them. 

Nearly everyone can be identified by a single defining trait: the grieving pilot, the angry teenager, the shy nerd, the sweet grandmother, the selfish bully. There is little complexity, and the audience quickly recognizes who will survive and who exists merely to become shark bait.  The interesting thing is now its not all white people; you have more Asian in this one likely due to it being coproduction 

Aaron Eckhart gives a committed one-dimensional performance, as the tormented flyer which is what these films   are about. You do not get character developments you get predictable arcs such as finding love, getting respect or   finding courage.  Thes is much thee same a   summer camp or hiker group meeting their doom in the woods in this case its the water.  The other aspect of this is you are now getting children doing adult roles such as caregiver.    The dialogue is more adult in nature with sarcasm and point of view. I speak of the role of Cora who is taking care of her brother.  Molly Belle Wright in the role   has some of the best lines for a child in this style of film. She almost steals the film even becoming the parent at the end . Children’s roles  have evolved.  

For fans of shark films, Deep Water provides enough action to justify a casual viewing, particularly on streaming. However, it lacks the originality, memorable characters, or sustained suspense necessary to join the better entries in either the disaster or shark genres. Like the survivors floating in its lifeboats, the film stays afloat but only just.