Deep Blue Sea
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Deep Blue Sea is a 1999 science fiction, horror, thriller film directed by Renny Harlin. It was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film stars Saffron Burrows, Thomas Jane, LL Cool J, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgård, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Plot
On an island research facility, Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) is harvesting the brain tissue of DNA-altered sharks as a possible cure for Alzheimer's disease. When the facility's backers send an executive (Samuel L. Jackson) to investigate the experiments, a routine procedure goes awry and a shark starts attacking the researchers. Now, with sharks outnumbering their human captors, McAlester and her team must figure out a way to stop them from escaping to the ocean and breeding.
Good Qualities
- The plot is decent, and it's arguably even more frightening than past shark movies had ever been before.
- The shark action is even more terrifying, violent, and even more freaky than most past shark movies before this film.
- Great pacing.
- Some likable characters, like Preacher, and Carter Blake.
- A very hilarious scene where Russell Franklin, during an Inspirational speech, gets unexpectedly eaten by a shark, surprisingly.
- Memorable quotes (eg. When Preachers berates a shark with "You ate my bird!")
- The storyline is even more horrifying, like the scene where the shark suddenly wakes up violently and takes Jim's served arm, and climbing the ladder scene.
- Just like the film, The Meg, this film manages to not be a rip-off of Jaws, or have just plain ridiculous writing (like Three-Headed Shark or Sharktopus) Instead, the film takes place in the underwater research facility instead of a beach like most shark movies usually do.
- Amazing action sequences, like the ladder scene.
- Great acting, especially for Saffron Burrows, LL Cool J, Thomas Jane, and Samuel L. Jackson.
- The soundtrack is full of terrifying and amazing music that was preformed by Trevor Rabin.
- The ending credits are very catchy, especially the song Deepest Blue by LL Cool J.
- The idea of having Mako sharks instead of Great White sharks is original.
Bad Qualities
- Even though it can be liked by shark movies and Jaws fans of the series, it's not really all that appealing to newcomers, making them hard to get into it.
- Susan McAlester is an incredibly unlikable character.
- The CGI effects for the sharks have not aged well.
Reception
Deep Blue Sea received mixed reviews from critics who praised its suspense, pacing, and action sequences, but criticized its unoriginality and B movie conventions. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a "Rotten" 59% rating, based on 112 reviews. The critics consensus reads, "Deep Blue Sea is no Jaws, but action fans seeking some toothy action can certainly do - and almost certainly have done - far worse for B-movie thrills.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 54 out of 100, based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Writing for Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised it as "a skillful thriller", saying that Deep Blue Sea "is essentially one well-done action sequence after another [...] It doesn't linger on the special effects (some of the sharks look like cartoons), but it knows how to use timing, suspense, quick movement and [especially] surprise". He concluded that the film keeps spectators guessing in an otherwise predictable genre.
Retrospectively, Deep Blue Sea has been regarded as the most successful shark film, especially within a limited genre that has been dominated by Steven Spielberg's 1975 thriller Jaws.
Trivia
- One month before the film was released there was a deleted scene where Susan McAlester was supposed to survive near the end of the film, but many test audiences really hated the ending and the filmmakers decided to kill off Susan.
- This was the first movie Stephen King saw after his fatal encounter with a van.
- This film was shot in the same studio where Titanic (1997) was filmed. Having produced Cutthroat Island (1995) at the sea, Renny Harlin was determined to produce this movie under the most controlled circumstances possible.
- During one scene, Thomas Jane (who played Carter) had to swim alongside an actual shark. The director was allowed to shoot the scene once he completed all the other scenes.