Deep Water

by Mike McGranaghan

Somehow, Deep Water is the second movie I’ve seen in the past two years where survivors of an airplane crash must also try to survive shark attacks. The first was 2024’s No Way Up. This is a perfect premise for a B-movie, as it promises an endless array of cheap thrills. Director Renny Harlin, having previously made Deep Blue Sea, undeniably knows how to stage shark-related mayhem.

Ben (Aaron Eckhart) is an airline First Officer who takes extra shifts to avoid having to confront his seriously ill son back home. He’s teamed on a flight to Shanghai with Rich (Ben Kingsley), a soon-to-retire pilot. (Uh-oh!) A fire breaks out while the plane is over the ocean, leading to a hard landing on the water. With the aircraft in pieces and survivors scattered among those pieces, Ben attempts to keep everyone safe until help can arrive. Then the hungry sharks show up.

Among the passengers are a little girl named Cora (Molly Belle Wright) and her new stepbrother Finn (Elijah Tamati), Chinese athletes Sam (Li Wenhan) and Lilly (Zhao Simei), and Becky (Kate Fitzpatrick), an older woman traveling to visit her granddaughter. Last, and most certainly least, is Dan (Angus Sampson), the most obnoxious human being ever born and, not coincidentally, the person inadvertently responsible for the fire.

Deep Water gives us two thrillers in one. The first is about the plane crash. Harlin stages it in harrowing detail, showing at length the way passengers are beaten, bashed, bloodied, and blown out the side of the aircraft. If you aren’t afraid of flying now, you might be after witnessing the extended disaster portrayed here.

The second is a shark thriller which, understandably, needs to work overtime to match the horrors of the crash. And it does! Whenever a shark chomps down on somebody, we witness it in graphic detail. Limbs are severed, bodies are bitten in half, and the creatures come flying out of the water in search of humans to eat. Steven Spielberg’s classic Jaws proved you don’t need to see everything in a shark attack to be effective. Most filmmakers, Harlin included, choose to show everything anyway because no shark movie will ever be as good as Jaws, so you might as well revel in the gore.

I found myself in a state of perpetual tension watching Deep Water. As expected, the characters are all one-dimensional and the plot tries to manipulate the audience’s emotions through the mini-stories of the survivors. Also, as required by the International Law of Shark Cinema, the most annoying character suffers the most extreme death. The movie’s pace is brisk and relentless, and the refusal to water down (no pun intended) the devastating impact of both the crash and the shark attacks guarantees you get the satisfying B-movie insanity you crave.

Eckhart holds down the center, bringing his usual intensity to the role of Ben. As Rich, Kingsley classes up the joint with a stoic performance that nevertheless hints the veteran actor knows he’s not exactly in a Shakespearian production. They get viewers buying into the unlikely plot. Deep Water isn’t a particularly deep movie, but it 100% delivers on the action and provides plenty of twisted, terrifying fun.