Movie Review: Deep Water

 

Picture this: It's the first weekend of the summer movie season and you're in the lobby of your local multiplex. Among the offerings playing is a Renny Harlin-directed disaster movie-turned-shark survival thriller starring Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley and Angus Sampson. A reasonable follow up question would be what year is it? 1998? 2004? Perhaps, 2010? Believe it or not, this was a scenario that could've played out if you had walked into any of the 1,675 theaters in the United States/Canada that were playing Deep Water this past weekend. What's just as surprising as something like this making its way to the big screen in 2026 is that it's a legitimately solid piece of throwback entertainment.

Deep Water is the kind of movie that Harlin should always be considered for but rarely gets hired to make these days. His largely uninspiring filmography over the past 25 years has painted a distorted picture of who he is as a filmmaker and getting the chance to direct this two-for-one schlock special is his way of proving that he's still the same guy he was in the 90's when he was one of Hollywood's preferred hires when they needed a reliable pro to direct a dumb blockbuster. The pride he takes in being able to stage a massive plane crash that kills dozens of people via flying objects, slamming their heads off their tray tables, etc. then immediately shift gears to having the some of the people that survived the impact of the plane hitting the open ocean water promptly get eaten by sharks can be felt through the screen. This material doesn't require buy-in from the director, but Harlin can't help but get earnestly invested in the plight of these one-note characters, their struggle to survive back-to-back catastrophic events and the horrific dismemberment of the (mostly) unlikable souls who don't make it out of the shark-infested, debris-filled waters alive. After seeing him slip back into his old form here, I'm actually kind of excited to see what he did on the whale attack movie he made with Melissa Barrera and 2-4 Travoltas last summer.

Deep Water isn't the next Deep Blue Sea (although there are a few moments in the final 20 minutes where Harlin channels the same demented over-the-top cartoonish energy that made that movie so much fun), let alone the next Jaws. It is however a reminder of the special entertainment value that a disaster/survival movie that's earnestly cheesy and dumb enough can hold. This is a recipe that has threatened to be lost with time, and it was nice to see a trusted steward of its legacy allow it to stave off extinction for now by cooking up a damn fine meal with it at a time where it was widely believed he longer knew his way around a kitchen. 

Grade: B-