Once upon a time, I used to lament the fact that the killer shark movie had gotten so stupid, we could never hope to get back to the energetic survival horror of a Jaws movie or even Deep Blue Sea. After what seemed like a tidal wave of movies solely created from their pun laden, surely-thought-up-in-a-bar titles up (Jurassic Shark, Ghost Shark, Shark Exorcist) I yearned for more grounded, finny thrillers to metaphorically sink my teeth into.
The good news is I eventually got my wish, but the bad news is that this new wave of shark movies are often lacking bite to such a degree, they instantly sink to the murky depths of your memory the moment you finish watching them. It’s almost like the sub-genre hasn’t realised that just because you’ve dropped the camp gimmicks of making your gilled villain a robot or part octopus, it doesn’t mean you should neglect to make them fun either. The latest example of this is Into The Deep, a movie that hopes to defuse how boring it is by wheeling out a 77 year old Richard Dreyfuss in the vain attempt that it’ll stir fond memories of Jaws – if by find memories, you mean it makes you rather want to watch Spielberg’s epic instead…
Proving that no one in these types of movies seem to go on idyllic boating holidays without some form of crippling trauma hamstringing their day to day lives, we meet Cassidy Branham, a marine biologist who has been wrestling her entire life with watching a freak attack that turned her dad from a loving father to shark nutrition in mere moments. Flashbacks – that seemingly suggest that her marine expert grandfather, Shemus, has been in his late seventies for at least twenty years – pick up the slack as he’s been trying to build up her confidence by yelling slightly confused sounding life lessons at her while she does laps in a pool.
This somehow comes in use when, on a holiday abroad, Cassidy, her husband Greg and two other divers head out on a boat to explore a submerged wreck for fun and immediately fall foul of a pack of huge Great Whites which relieves one of their party of the burden of having two arms; however, while they struggle to stop the bleeding, they are suddenly set upon be a gang of modern day pirates. Led by the cold hearted Jordan Devane – a man who seems to have once hit his head and woke up thinking he was 1997 era Mickey Rourke – the maritime marauders hijack Cassidy’s holiday turned horror show and demand that they dive back into the shark infested waters in order to pick up the four crates of drugs that’s been left on the ocean floor.
I would say what follows next is a battle of wits, but the smartest life forms here seem to be the plainly CGI sharks; however, can Cassidy remember all the rambling advice her grandfather’s been shouting at her since childhood to survive both the pirates and the the flesh eating beasts that lurk beneath the surface?
I’m starting to get pretty fucking sick and tired of shark movies that keep trying to weave out a tense, drawn out thriller only to provide an endless stream of boredom instead. In fact, at this point, I’ve long such given up hope that any new release will use Jaws, Open Water or The Shallows as a yardstick for greatness and would even currently be relieved if they used Deep Blue Sea 3 instead, because at least that was fun.
Look, I understand that not every film can rustle up the money to be as deranged and unhinged as Under Paris or Meg 2, but surely budget doesn’t limit you from creating interesting characters or a vaguely interesting plot, right?
Director Christian Sesma (who seems responsible for way too many Luke Goss action movies to possibly be healthy) seems content to just turn in a bog standard thriller that makes all the mistakes numerous cookie cutter shark films have made before him by not only making the sharks the secondary threat after Jon Ceda’s clueless villain, but it also throws in the diving holiday/sunken wreck trope that around 70% of all shark movies seem to use which also results in Into The Deep bring horribly derivative.
However, there was a small hope that the movie’s cast may even the odds a little because there’s a few familiar names slapped onto the poster that hint that they could make a full banquet out of this dog’s dinner, but alas that wasn’t meant to be. The big news is that they managed to convince Jaws veteran Richard Dreyfuss to appear, but he appears so confused and erratic, it genuinely feels like the filmmakers burst into his home, dragged him out of bed, drove him to the coast and shout slurred advice at a small girl. In fact, his general demeanor was so strange, I became convinced that his jittery body language was him actually signalling for help through the screen (cocaine’s a helluva drug, kids) and I have to say, watching him get eaten alive by voracious fish in Piranha 3D was a far more dignified nod to his legacy than this.
Elsewhere we find Scout Taylor-Compton who still is trying to live up to playing Laurie Strode in Rob Zombie’s divisive Halloween remake and while she does her best to try and bring something new to the tried and true trauma-in-a-wetsuit role that numerous actresses have attempted over the last fifteen years, the script does her no favours – least of all a scene where she convinces a shark not to eat her by putting her grandfather’s bullshit to good use and becoming one with the ocean or something. I don’t know, maybe the movie is trying to be too metaphorical with the “deep” part of the title, but it just comes across as silly.
Also padding out the cast is Stuart Townsend of all people and for a man who once was hired to play Aragorn in Lord Of The Rings and who followed up Tom Cruise by playing the vampire Lestat, Into The Deep may also accurately describe his career trajectory.
Completing the whole “been there, ate that” nature of the film, the sharks themselves are fashioned from the usual, bargin basement CGI that looks actually quite decent as they lazily drift in the distance, but the second they have to something important – like eat a fucker – they just look as bad as the awful digital blood that fills the screen. It might have helped the struggling visuals if the attacks were actually staged with some creativity, but the movie can’t even muster that too and a one point actually has one of the pirate suddenly fall of the boat into a feeding frenzy already in progress because he has all the survival skills of a depressed hamster.
Yet another direct to streaming shark film means yet another murky slog through a thriller that skimps heavily on the thrills and the rather questionable draw of seeing Dreyfuss in another shark movie is offset by the feeling you rather him be wrapped up safely at home with a good book. I guess if we want another fun killer shark movie, we’d best wait for the Under Paris sequel because Into The Deep is just deep shit no matter which way you slice it.
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