Deep Water

★★⯪☆ (👍)

Deep Water (2026)

Runtime: 109 minutes

MPAA: Rated R for violent content/bloody images and some language.

I legitimately cannot believe that I'm saying this, but Deep Water should have removed the shark elements entirely, and with some narrative tightening, it would have made for a more engaging and affecting tale of human survival. As it stands, we have a decent diversion that works, strangely and ironically when it focuses on the people affected by the tragedy rather than the cheap shark thrills it's after.

Directed by Renny Harlin and written by a team consisting of Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, S.P. Krause and Damien Power, Deep Water is what you'd expect to get after infusing Gerard Butler's Plane with sharks. Pilot Ben (Aaron Eckhart) and Captain Rich (Ben Kingsley) embark on an international flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai, and we get a decent setup that's a bit scattered in establishing passengers and subplots, but establishes a low-key rhythm of everyone busy in their personal lives, conflicts and situations. They include Cora (Molly Belle Wright) and her step-brother Finn (Elijah Tamati), esports player Lilly (Rose Zhao) and teammate Sam (Li Wenhan), rival Hutch (Lakota Johnson), flight attendants Penny (Lucy Barrett), Zoe (Nashi) and a stereotypical irritating and entitled American Dan (Angus Sampson), who stands out from the rest of the cast.

A power bank in the stowaway cabin catches fire, which is pretty implausible given how extensively airlines inspect every bag, but it inspires a chaotic, over-the-top yet tense sequence as the people on board try to cling to their seats and some get hit by flying objects, while the pilots try to get the plane safely landed at the nearest airport. A chain of increasingly preposterous events, which includes engines failing and plane sections being ripped apart should basically suggest at this point that we should suspend our disbelief and enjoy what's presented to us on the screen. The rapidfire editing is disorienting and the lack of lighting makes it hard to discern what's happening, but maybe that's the intention of the direction, to immerse us in confusion and panic.

After the crash, the plane becomes fragmented, just like the storytelling, as various subplots spawn and jump from one to another, which becomes a little unfocused eventually. Deep Water essentially tries compressing two movies into one, but both keep working against each other, as the shark aspect is generic and tired, and the survival tale becomes undermined. Still, it's clear that one works better than the other, and enough to convey the exhaustion that all survivors on board are experiencing. Part of the reason is that the struggle is fundamentally human. In this situation, we'd be desperate and grasping on to anything - rafts, plane remnants and swimming for our lives when there's danger - and there's naturally clashing ideologies and conflicts as the worst tendencies of some people begin to show. By encouraging cooperation and compassion, it's uplifting in this sense, even if the individual payoffs don't carry the emotional wallop that it intends to achieve.

It's pretty messy, yes, but it doesn't spin on its wheels. Sadly, the shark genre has been overused to death by now, and it offers nothing new or innovative within this lane, leaning into familiar tropes that include aggressively attacking just about anyone, and giving our protagonists an unbelievable amount of plot armor. It's extremely funny to say this, but the sharks drain the momentum and tension of the overall piece, with the same repetitive underwater shots of human legs racing against time to get onto something afloat. It also becomes obvious at some point that the background sky and clouds look distractingly fake, which the film might possibly know and try to conceal it under dark lighting. We have a hypothesis here.

While I was actively shouting, "just remove the sharks from the movie!", the absurdity of it all somehow comes full circle in the climax, where the sharks brutally attack rescuers, cause lifeboats to capsize and helicopters to explode. The multitude of weaknesses suddenly become secondary to unintentionally enjoying the ridiculousness of it all, which I found even funnier than the entirety of the newest Scary Movie. There are also some surprising continuity errors where people mysteriously just disappear, given that a team of writers penned this, but it does wrap up satisfyingly enough by focusing back on the smaller, human elements. Look, it's not that deep, and it's nowhere near art. But if you have nothing else to do, Deep Water works on a minimal level, weirdly in another direction than marketed. May human spirit and perseverance win.