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But the one thing you must have in a movie like this is a strong first act, and that’s exactly what happens here. I don’t mean to say that it’s groundbreaking, or even particularly satisfying, from a narrative standpoint. But if you happen to watch Deep Blue Sea after reading this, pause after 20 minutes and ask yourself the following: What are the stakes? What’s the tone of the story? Who are all these people? What motivates them? What kind of universe do they live in? What are the rules? You will find that you HAVE answers. Not DEEP ones, but answers nonetheless. Everything that happens after that is completely bananas, but you can’t say you haven’t been warned about what’s coming.

It should also be noted that cinematographer Stephen Windon is best known for his work on about half the Fast & Furious films, so take whatever that means to you worth a grain of salt. What it means to me is that in addition to being a technically well constructed film, Deep Blue Sea is also a fine LOOKING movie. It may seem hard to go wrong with the ocean as your backdrop, but it also takes a lot of imagination to create a distinctive world out of that, and he succeeds quite well here. It’s to the film’s credit, because without some relatively solid (if not entirely believable) world building, it’s harder to accept what happens later in the film.

Very hard.

I do realize that the premise of this movie involves regular, every day Mako sharks being turned into genetic superbeasts with a deep and abiding hatred of humans. But for some reason, in this movie the sharks audibly roar, and also rumble like the USS Enterprise when they pass by the camera underwater. That may not sound like a big deal, but it becomes as hilariously distracting as the way the characters constantly freeze up when attacked, instead of running away. Hey, we just saw a shark swim backward for the first time in 300 million years! And what does the head scientist (Stellan Skarsgard) have to say about this as his team barks in amazement?

“Let’s stay focused, people!”

Stay focused? On what? Tom Jane’s abs? What if the sharks started talking, or playing air guitar? Would that be interesting enough to draw focus? Deep Blue Sea is filled with characters who consistently do the complete opposite of what a normal human would do, making it much harder to sympathize with their horrible, bloody deaths. Of course, Skarsgard is also the guy who foreshadows doom by contemptuously comparing their work to God during a critical moment in the story. So, this is the kind of science movie where the scientists are on the side of the screenwriters, and NOT of science. It just feels at many points in the story like there might have been a less stupid way to reveal certain things, while still serving the plot.

I choose to make the assumption that this is a well made movie that simply chose to embrace a terrible script, while giving the actors enough space to breathe what life they could into it. Tom Jane’s “shark wrangler” is by far the coolest character in the movie, and I’ll be damned if Jane doesn’t manage to inject just a dash of pathos into the guy. L.L. Cool J famously appears in a stereotypical role that may have come right out of a Michael Bay film, but he provides welcome comic relief from story events that, up to the point he appears, are already funny, but for all the wrong reasons.

I can’t tell if Deep Blue Sea is TRYING to take the piss out of killer shark movies, or if this is just a happy coincidence. Jaws was originally supposed to be more like Deep Blue Sea and less like the classic it is - a malfunctioning robot shark ended up forcing a change in tone. The reality behind Deep Blue Sea is probably closer to “good people make bad film as best they can,” but the end result is undeniably fun to watch. Even if it’s not a great film, or even a particularly good horror picture, you’ll get a lot of laughs out of it. Watch it because you love to laugh. Watch it because you enjoy watching stupid people die due to their own bad decisions.

At best, this is a “so bad it’s good” kind of film, that’s best watched drunk with friends in situations like a Super Bowl loss, a national tragedy, or whenever group bonding is appropriate. And best of all, Deep Blue Sea contains the one thing - the only thing - that might have made Jaws, and every other movie ever made, just a little bit better:

Tom Jane. With a harpoon gun.

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