Deep Blue Sea, a giant dumb film about massive sensible sharks, remains to be an entertaining motion horror 25 years after it first swam onto our screens.

Director Renny Harlin has had a wild profession in motion and in horror. There are highs (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Cliffhanger) and lows (Cuthroat Island, Exorcist: The Beginning). Deep Blue Sea didn’t precisely find yourself being lauded as a tacky horror-laced gem like its fellow 1999 blockbuster The Mummy, however in the realm of shark motion pictures? It’s nonetheless received enamel.

It sees researchers at an underwater facility looking for the remedy for Alzheimer’s illness by learning the regenerative qualities of sharks’ brains. Unfortunately, it’s crunch time for the challenge financially, and the head honcho, Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson), is coming to see how shut they’re to a breakthrough.

It seems they’re very shut. However, in typical film scientists’ pondering, the head researchers (performed by Stellan Skarsgard and Saffron Burrows) dope the take a look at sharks to attain the end result. Consequently, the Mako sharks are usually not solely larger and quicker however smarter, too. So when a violent storm and a gnarly accident happen, the sensible sharks take the likelihood to get out and chomp on any poor souls unfortunate sufficient to be in the approach. Therefore, the decisions for the crew are easy. Get to the floor, drown, or get eaten.

The Shark Movie Problem

Make no mistake. Much like exorcism motion pictures, Shark motion pictures have been chasing an unattainable excessive for a while. Genre standouts that transcend mentioned style, comparable to Jaws and The Exorcist, make it extraordinarily troublesome to observe. I’ve genuinely misplaced depend of what number of instances I’ve had hopes for a shark film and been bitterly upset. And it’s been nearly 50 years since Jaws and its mechanical shark set the benchmark. There have been quite a bit of frankly terrible spins on the template in that point.

So, admittedly, the bar is fairly low for shark motion pictures to clear past Jaws. There’s extra to it than simply as a result of Jaws exists (the change in how sharks are perceived particularly). But misunderstanding what made the thought of colossal monsters of the deep lurking beneath your ft in the ocean so rattling terrifying is a giant half of it.

While Deep Blue Sea is undoubtedly fairly goofy at instances and clearly tired of abiding by precise shark habits (some of which is admittedly defined away by their enhanced talents), it doesn’t overlook the golden rule. Feed on the worry of the deep and the issues in it.

The scenes underwater the place the human crew are at the mercy of the killer beasts have stress to them. Especially these in open water the place Thomas Jane’s grizzled shark wrangler Carter Blake performs a sport of hen. On a private stage, there’s a second that stuffed me with dread that wasn’t inherently scary itself. Carter swims via a mesh tunnel in the facility’s caged-off part of the sea. When he arrives at its exit, the shot reveals simply how insignificant that tunnel feels compared to the cavernous blue murk surrounding it. Deep Blue Sea could also be a largely daft chomper romp, nevertheless it has its moments to make thasalaphobia victims uncomfortable. Credit must be given for the usually very good use of area.

Disaster in the Deep Blue Sea

It additionally mixes in somewhat bit of the traditional catastrophe film format. After some shark shenanigans, the underwater facility begins to flood and crumble. The crew traverses all method of perilous conditions, making an attempt to get to the floor while the sharks acquire extra floor (nicely, water). It could not have been sufficient by itself to make a reliable catastrophe flick, nevertheless it provides one thing to the monster film format that guidelines the film’s construction. Also, it helps that the facility itself is a good setting.

Perhaps most significantly, Deep Blue Sea strikes together with the similar single-minded focus of a shark. It will get the guff out of the approach shortly. From there, it’s a straight shoot of sharks vs. people vs. crumbling undersea facility for over an hour. Pure popcorn delight.

I don’t wish to sound outdated, however the type of movie Deep Blue Sea is more and more troublesome to search out in modern-day cinema. Sure, there are lots of genuinely low-rent homages to the motion/horror hybrid. The sequels are underwhelming proof of that. On this scale, there’s merely nothing fairly prefer it. It could not have The Mummy‘s swagger, but it’s simply as gloriously entertaining in its personal approach.