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Wait...is this a shark movie that’s also...subversively self-aware? Interesting.

Burrows delivered that line with just a dusting of irony, and when she said it my mind flew back to The World is not Enough. You know, the third consecutive Bond film to squander the fact that Pierce Brosnan was literally born for the role. In it, Denise Richards played Dr. Christmas Jones, the world’s most incompetently sexy nuclear physicist (and winner of Viking Night’s prestigious Most Awkward Bond Girl award). It’s not Richards’ fault she was miscast, but it was impossible to take her seriously as a physicist when her primary function was clearly an answer to the question:

“What if James Bond got to bang a Lara Croft cosplayer?”

Saffron Burrows has it...a little better. She’s not there to be a sex object (thankfully), but her elegant British accent is the only thing keeping her from sounding entirely out of her element as a scientist. Maybe that’s the point. She’s playing Dr. Susan McAlester, who is apparently the world’s leading Alzheimer’s researcher - or something. Jackson is playing eccentric billionaire Russell Franklin, who is financing her research. McAlester explains that it all has something to do with shark brains, something something science her father died - so you know she’s serious about this.

The point is, a company called Chimera Pharmaceuticals (get it? Google it, if you don’t) is supposed to be benevolently performing genetic experiments on sharks in an effort to cure dementia. That all sounds good, but the president of Chimera is the same dude who was running Omni Consumer Products in RoboCop. Actor Ronnie Cox has no lines - his mere presence is shorthand for “this company screws people.”

Additionally, when Franklin accompanies McAlester to the research facility, he seems bizarrely unaware of what goes on there - especially since the previous scene was all about how much money he’s spending on all this. This isn’t just an excuse for Burrows to spout painfully expositional dialogue (and she does; everyone does). It’s an actual plot point that he really seems to not have any idea what’s going on at the billion dollar research facility whose work underpins the entire company’s financial portfolio.

Worst of all, the facility is called “Aquatica,” which sounds like a bad '90s synth-pop band. Also, friggin Michael Rappaport is in charge of the shark pens.

Okay, okay, you didn’t need me to tell you that this is a disaster in the making, where all the characters are stupid and everything around them goes predictably wrong. Of course the facility is conveniently short staffed. Of course a storm happens. Of course the therapy has the unintended side effect of turning the sharks from killing machines to hyper-intelligent, vindictive killing machines. And of course people spend a lot of time standing around staring at something horrific instead of immediately fleeing. I wasn’t just being vulgar earlier - this movie will make your brain scream “Why the fuck are you just standing there!!” over a half dozen times before it's over. The science, physics, the drama - very little about Deep Blue Sea is what you’d call “credible.”

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