Every shark film that came after Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws struggled to get out from under the great beast’s shadow. But 25 years ago, director Renny Harlin demonstrated that instead of trying to rival Jaws, it was viable to make Jaws on literal steroids.
Deep Blue Sea focuses on a subaquatic lab called Aquatica, or as investor Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson) calls it, “Alcatraz Floats.” There, a team of biologists are working on a cure for Alzheimer's. Heading the project is Dr. Susan McAllister (Saffron Burrows) and Jim Whitlock (Stellan Skarsgård), who hope to harvest the brain tissue of mako sharks to cure the brain disorder. But because this is a movie, manipulating genetics to make big-brained sharks has violent consequences.
When the sharks break into the underwater lab to get vengeance on those responsible for their newfound existential depth, havoc ensues as the survivors must reach the surface before the entire facility is flooded. As they struggle to climb out of the crumbling laboratory, Deep Blue Sea abandons the realistic limits of survival horror like Open Water or The Reef, instead using its pack of vindictive, hyper-intelligent sharks to turn the film into a slasher movie.
For most shark films, where survivors are picked off in the open ocean, character development is of little regard, but Harlin pairs each action sequence with an equally ambitious role call. Carter (Thomas Jane) the shark wrangler and cowboy of the deep sea, Preacher (LL Cool J) the God-fearing chef who's struggling with his sobriety, and Janice (Jacqueline McKenzie) Jim’s loyal wife, each get their moment to shine. No cast member is merely chum in the water, making the question of who will survive nearly impossible to guess.
In slasher fashion, demises are either elaborately drawn out or over in the blink of the eye. Jaws may have invented the stylistic watery demise, but Harlin’s super sharks find inventive ways to surpass expectations. The first demise is a chaotic array of blood, waves, and catastrophic explosions that brings the crew up from the sub-aquatic laboratory to the water’s surface and back down into the depths. This ludicrously violent beginning sets off ever-mounting disasters for the lab and demonstrates that Deep Blue Sea is a creature feature as devilishly mutated as its test subjects.
One of Deep Blue Sea’s more restrained moments.
The movie shares more with the genre’s patriarch than just its finned foe and unnecessary sequels. The hubris that lies beneath the surface of the thriller bubbles, as while the corrupt officials of Jaws could stay safely on land, Dr. McAllister is forced to face her abominable creations head-on. Everything Jaws alludes to is forced to the surface by this hybrid action-horror, which chooses text over subtext with every line delivery and bite.
Shark horror fandom comes with an inbuilt forgiveness for pseudoscience and limited special effects. If you can look past these foibles, Deep Blue Sea is a champion of the genre. Few shark movies pay as much attention to the creatures as Harlin, as the dwindling crew members must fight for their lives and their screen time. From shark-taming scenes to unintentional feeding time, there’s plenty of love for the aquatic creatures, and no director since has really devoted the camera to the shark.
The shark attack genre grew rapidly in the wake of Jaws, but today it flops around in shallow waters. Those who attempt to add to it either remain doggedly faithful to the limitations of survival horror, as in Something in the Water, or embark on absurd pseudoscience creature features with limited budgets, like Under Paris. Deep Blue Sea remains a bastion of the sharkverse because it refused to decide between the two, instead fusing the genre into a glorious mutation. Instead of continuing to turn to Spielberg for inspiration, studios should study this absurdist feat of finned hell. Deep Blue Sea so fervently jumped the shark that it became an unmissable chapter in the underwater horrorscape.
