If you’ve seen a big budget disaster movie before, you know what to expect from Deep Water.  Every disaster trope you can think of makes an appearance.  What distinguishes this movie from the rest is that it’s not just an airplane crash movie, it’s also a shark attack movie!   That’s right, it’s a genre mash-up, which turns out to be a brilliant move because both halves compliment each other perfectly, like a burger with a side of fries.  The movie isn’t a masterpiece, but as far as genre fare goes, it’s exciting and entertaining.

One aspect of the disaster movie formula that Deep Water does particularly well is including a character we can’t wait to be killed off.  In this case it’s an insufferable jackass named Dan (Angus Sampson), who smokes in the non-smoking zones, is hostile to everyone he counters and single-handedly causes the death of hundreds of people on the flight because he stashes a lithium battery charging device with a frayed cord in his suitcase and lies about it.  I wanted him to die after only a couple minutes, which is quite an accomplishment on behalf of actor Angus Sampson.  I hope people who see him in this movie and then encounter him in real-life don’t pelt him with stones.

Before we get to the disaster that justifies this movie, we’re introduced to an assortment of characters designed to appeal to specific audience segments.  We learn just enough to care about them, but not feel too badly if they don’t make it:

• Captain Rich (Ben Kingsley) is nearing retirement and loves singing karaoke at bars with the crew
• First Officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) wants to get home to his seriously ill son and agrees to this fatal flight out of desperation
• Declan (Ryan Bown) and Jaya (Kelly Gale), a handsome mixed-race couple who can’t keep their hands off of each other
• Their kids Cora (Molly Belle Wright) and Finn (Elijah Tamati), from previous marriages who don’t get along
• Matt (Richard Crouchley), a computer nerd who has the hots for flight attendant Zoe (Nashi)
• Becky (Kate Fitzpatrick), a brassy old British broad who dispenses unwanted advice with drink in hand
• Hutch (Lakota Johnson), a testosterone-fueled player on an American soccer team who antagonizes members of a Chinese esports team
• Lilly (Simei Zhao) and Sam (Wenhan Li), teammates on the esports team who really, really like each other

Spoiler alert: any other characters who don’t get a subplot dies horribly for the cause.

The flight for the crew and the 250 souls on board is from LA to Singapore, crossing the Pacific Ocean’s “deep water” that inspired the movie’s title.  When the plane reaches cruising altitude, we get idle chit-chat from those who presumably will survive.  Rich politely asks Ben over his troubled past.  Ben was in the Air Force but was discharged because he had a physical altercation with a superior officer.  This is why he’s not the captain and is forced to take every flight that comes his way to pay for his son’s medical care.

Declan’s daughter Cora hates her step-brother Finn for reasons.  Becky tells Matt that he’s a “five” and has no chance with flight attendant Zoe, who’s a “nine”.  Lilly chides Sam for not reading her letter before they got on the plane, which I assumed was a confession of love.  Finn bumps into Matt and the two connect over computer gaming.  Dan is consistently an ass throughout, complaining about a snoring passenger and then smoking in the lavatory.

Before we get any more character backstory, Dan’s luggage catches fire in the cargo bay and bursts into flames.  Rich sends two members of the crew to put it out, but they fail and a CO2 canister rips a hole into the plane and damages one of the engines.  Things go downhill from there.  Engines go off line, a side panel is ripped open and passengers are sucked out to their deaths, the plane steadily loses altitude and power, and so on.  Director Renny Harlin is an old hat at action movies and makes it worth the price of admission.

However, it looks like Rich will be able to land the plane on the water Sully-style.  Unfortunately, the plane hits a coral reef, cartwheels and breaks into three pieces.  (Three set pieces, if you will.)  As far as plane crashes go, it’s well done and you definitely shouldn’t watch it before your next trip.

The remainder of the film involves the three groups trying to stay alive.  Making matters much worse is the arrival of sharks, who attack anything in the water, even floating corpses.  I knew the remaining cast would survive, but how would Dan, who somehow becomes an even bigger jackass as things get worse, wind up dying?  Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that when he meets his end, it should have been replayed in slow motion so I could savor it.

Recommendation

Deep Water never takes itself seriously.  It doesn’t try to be the best airplane disaster movie or the best shark attack movie, either.  Instead, it tries to be an entertaining combination of the two.  It’s silly, melodramatic and corny at times, but that’s expected for a film like this.  If you like silly disaster films, it’s a good time.  Even still, there’s enough going for it that makes it worthwhile.

In tune with its “best of both worlds approach”, there’s a spectacular airplane crash in the first half, which whittles down the cast to a reasonable number, followed by the arrival of hungry sharks, which brings it down even further.  Adding sharks was an inspired move, because instead of waiting for someone to inexplicably drown or die slowly because of injuries, they’re dinner.  What could have been very predictable becomes a bit less so, which makes the movie more gripping than it would have been originally.

Deep Water is trashy, but Hollywood veteran action movie director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea) ensures that it’s well-made trash.  He’s an expert at big action set pieces and proves his mettle here, first with the airplane crash sequence, then with the shark attacks.  He keeps things moving at a steady clip, pausing occasionally for a few unavoidable corny genre moments before returning to the ruthless carnage.  There were several times when I thought, surely this character will survive, but nope.  Several of the deaths surprised me, but most of the characters I thought would make it through to the end did precisely that, so it evened out.

The recognizable actors in the cast get most of the dialog and dramatic scenes, and they deliver.  Aaron Eckhart is fine as the requisite square-jawed white male hero, with a voice so low that it was frequently drowned out by the music on the soundtrack.  I’m not sure why he’s focused on films like this for so long, but he doesn’t embarrass himself here.  Ben Kingsley is also good in his abbreviated supporting turn, with a touching farewell scene.  Angus Sampson (Insidious franchise) is such an aggressively repulsive villain that this movie should open a few doors for him in that space.

With the exception of those three, I didn’t recognize anyone else in the supporting cast.  This wasn’t a problem for me because they exist to be placed into perilous situations and look terrified.  The kids cry, the young adults are painfully hormonal and the mature adults try to instill some semblance of calm on those factions.  Lucy Barrett, Priya Jain and Nashi make for a trio of beautiful flight attendants.  Kate Fitzpatrick has her moments as the crusty old broad.  The rest, eh.

Deep Water is a typical disaster movie made better as an airplane crash/shark attack movie combo.  The inclusion of both genres make it slightly less predictable and more exciting than it would have been otherwise.  And Renny Harlin is still a capable action movie director.  Recommended.

Analysis

The brilliance of Deep Water, if I can call it that, is in its economy.  Instead of wasting time with meandering character beats that are typical of disaster movies, this movie gives us just enough backstory for us to have an abiding interest in who lives and who dies.  Then, it’s off to the races.  The advantage of this approach is that the movie never drags.  Little time is spent on inconsequential characters.  They die very early on, eliminating any reason for us to care about them.

As a result, the film is able to bring us the harrowing airplane descent and crash well in the first act, and follow that up with the survivors trying to survive sharks until they are rescued.  This is how Deep Water managed to exceed my expectations.  The movie upped the ante when it brought in sharks.  Survival is no longer a matter of endurance for the characters, it’s immediate.

While Deep Water is a disaster movie through and through, it’s never weighed down by genre tropes.  For example, there are two athletes who hate each other who eventually become best friends.  It’s a corny subplot that I knew would resolve itself this way by the end.  Same goes for the young Chinese couple who have trouble admitting to each other that they’re in love.  I know that when they were safe, they would give into their feelings.  Subplots like these have been in disaster movies forever.  Deep Water may honor them, but doesn’t let them get in the way of the action.

Disaster films

As far as airplane disaster films go, Fearless (1993), Flight (2012) and Sully (2016) remain the best I’ve seen.  Apologies to fans of Society of the Snow (2024) which I have yet to see.  For shark attack movies, Jaws (1975) remains the best, with Open Water (2003) and Blake Lively’s The Shallows (2016) not far behind.

I mention this because not all airplane films or shark films are campy trash.  Some take the genre seriously and are exceptional, but those movies are few and far between.  This is why I have no problem with appreciating Deep Water for what it is.  The filmmakers know they’re not going to make the next great airplane disaster movie or shark attack movie, so they aspire to be entertaining trash and hit the mark.  Deep Water doesn’t try to reinvent the genres it dabbles in, but it does execute their formulas proficiently.  It’s unoriginal, but satisfying nonetheless.

Aaron Eckhart, disaster’s co-pilot

Eckhart’s career has been a strange one.  He made waves in 1997 and 1998 in two Neil LaBute films, In The Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors.  He followed them with performances in Erin Brockovich and Nurse Betty (2000), earned a Golden Globe nomination for Thank You For Smoking (2005) and starred in The Dark Night (2008).  However, instead of becoming a star, he’s made a lot of action movies of middling quality, or worse.

Why Eckhart never caught on is a mystery.  He’s handsome and can act.  Gossip says that he’s difficult to work with, but that rarely hinders actors careers except in very extreme cases (see: Christian Bale).  Whatever the case may be, since his peak in Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film, the only quality films he’s been in are Rabbit Hole (2010) and Sully.  

I suppose at some point, actors must keep working to pay the bills.  Eckhart’s career hasn’t devolved to the level of Eric Roberts or Nic Cage, but he’s made a lot of shlock in the last 18 years.  (I, Frankenstein is terrible and unredeemable.)  Deep Water may not lead to him getting work in respectable projects again, but it shows that he still can carry a movie.  Maybe he’s one Darren Aranofsky film away from a career resurgence, like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and Brendan Fraser in The Whale.  Or maybe he’s hoping The Bricklayer 2 is greenlit.

E.L.T locator pings

• In 2016, Eckhart played First Officer Jeffrey Skiles in Clint Eastwood’s Sully.  How ironic that ten years later, he still hasn’t been promoted.
• I laughed when Kingsley’s Rich confessed that he got lucky as a result of his karaoke.  Dude’s still scoring with the ladies at Eighty-two.
• This is the first time I’ve seen Angus Sampson in a movie outside of his four appearances in the Insidious franchise.  I love the angry nerd version of Lauren and Hardy he does with Leigh Whannell in those films.  If only the producers would give them their own film.
• Did Sampson’s Dan really throw another passenger to the sharks so that he could get onto the raft?  It happened so fast I wasn’t sure what I saw.
• Among Deep Water’s touching moments is when flight attendant Penny gives her nice shoes to Cora for safekeeping before she swims to her death.  I don’t recall what Cora did with the shoes after Penny was chomped, though.
• Finn delivers the best line of the movie when he responds to Zoe saying that everything’s going to be OK.  “You keep saying that when you know it won’t be!”
• I was also touched when Becky left a video recording for the grandchild she’ll never see again, who will never get to see it.  Very human moment.
• Does being a member of an esports team really preclude you from hooking up with a teammate?
• I don’t get why American soccer player Hutch antagonizes Lily and Sam.  Too much steroids, perhaps?
• I gasped when a shark got Coach Dade.
• I was glad that Zoe survived, but I was hoping Finn became shark bait.
• I laughed when Hutch, after everything that’s happened, tells Sam to go for it with Lily after they’re rescued.  Young male hormones never shut off, do they?
• Of course Ben has a tearful call with his wife and son as the sun rises.
• I can’t tell if Deep Water was an American-Chinese coproduction like The Meg, but it also features Chinese characters prominently in the cast.  The movie even makes Chinese fishermen the heroes.