Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Action | Horror | Thriller

Researchers on the undersea laboratory Aquatica have genetically altered the brains of captive sharks to develop a potential cure for Alzheimer’s disease. There is one unexpected side effect. The sharks are getting smarter. Which could mean trouble for the researchers. And lunch for the sharks.

You can swim but you can’t hide when a tropical storm floods Aquatica, plunging Samuel L. Jackson, Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, LL Cool J and the rest of the crew into a harrowing battle of wits against sleek killing - and thinking! - machines.

Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2) directs, squeezing nerve-jangling suspense and thrills from a film that's a monster movie, a chase movie, a movie that snaps hold and won't let go. Dive in.

User Comment: Sunil Patel (poltrcow@umich.edu) from Ann Arbor, Michigan, 6 June 2001 • After the opening scene of *Deep Blue Sea*, in which (predictably) a shark terrorizes a quartet of partying teenagers on a boat, I decided I was in for a crappy movie. A crappy movie that would contain basically every movie AND horror movie cliche I could think of. I was right. And wrong.

I will say that the premise for this movie is great: super-intelligent sharks. Sharks are bad enough, but...smart sharks? Immediately you have terrifying possibilities running through your mind. The sad fact, though, is that this is one of those movies where the screenwriters (and I can't believe it took three people to come up with this) threw some dice and picked which character was going to die next. That's what the plot boils down to: things go wrong; someone dies. More things go wrong; someone else dies. And so on. People whom you couldn't care less about die. People who you really don't want to see die die.

The people are an interesting band of characters. The female scientist, pleasing to the eye and the ear (I'm a sucker for accents), is utterly consumed by her research. (And for all you testosterone-driven males, she does strip down to her underwear in one scene.) Samuel L. Jackson goes about saying his lines as president of a pharmaceutical company. I just love the way Michael Rapaport talks: he's welcome in any movie. LL Cool J deftly provides the comic relief and was clearly the audience favorite. Sure, there are some other characters, but pretty much everyone's one-dimensional, as expected.

I think I've bashed this movie enough. It's time to get to the crux of the argument: this is an entertaining movie. As soon as the movie entered the lab facility, I became completely immersed in the film. As the movie progressed, I didn't think about how long it had gone on and mentally calculate how much was left. Once the trouble started, the movie grabbed me and never let go. I was not perhaps literally on the edge of my seat, but no outside thoughts penetrated my mind. It's not that the movie is scary or anything; it's that it's suspenseful. Predictably suspenseful, but suspenseful nonetheless. There is one scene in the film (I cannot conclusively tell whether it falls nearer or the beginning or the middle because, as I said, I lost track of time) during which I sensed the ENTIRE AUDIENCE jumping out of their seats. At the risk of getting off on a tangent, the sharks were believable. And the speed at which they moved unnerved me. They did succeed at their purpose: to keep a continual shudder running through my body. Let's just say you couldn't get me within ten miles of that facility. Oh, look, I did get off on a tangent, just great. At times I of course found myself wondering why some of these characters were so unbelievably stupid in their actions, but it's all part of the fun. And that's what I ended up deciding about this movie: it was fun. Blood-soaked, cringe-inducing fun.

Summary: Fun and entertaining.

--- JOYA ---

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