DEEP WATER (2026)

Studio:   Magenta Light Studios
Director: Renny Harlin
Writer:   Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, S.P. Krause, Damien Power, John Kim
Producer: Bob Yari, Volodymyr Artemenko, Grant Bradley, Dale G. Bradley, Neal Kingston, Robert Van Norden, Ryan Hamilton, Ying Ye, Adrian Guerra, Gene Simmons, Gary Hamilton
Stars:    Aaron Eckhart, Angus Sampson, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Barrett, Molly Belle Wright

Review Score:

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Summary:

After a disastrous plane crash, the remaining crew and passengers aboard an international flight must band together to survive being stranded in shark-infested waters.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Desperate to avoid going home and confronting the trouble his family is facing with his ill son, hotheaded pilot Ben volunteers to be the first officer aboard a Northeastern Airlines commercial flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai piloted by Richard Peters. Among other crew members, Ben and Rich are joined by flight attendants Penny and Zoe.

Prior to boarding, Ben has a brief interaction with a father named Declan and his feisty daughter Cora. After Ben leaves, Cora expresses displeasure with her new stepmother Jaya and seven-year-old stepbrother Finn.

Elsewhere, self-centered passenger Dan improperly stores an electronic device inside checked luggage that a distracted TSA agent doesn’t see. Dan then shoves his way through the boarding line past Chinese esports gamers Lisa and Sam, who have a crush on each other that both of them are hesitant to acknowledge.

Sam has a minor altercation with Hutch, a drunken, aggressive student athlete who behaves inappropriately toward Lisa. Hutch has to be restrained by his friend Jesse and their team’s chaperone Coach Dade.

Aboard the plane, widowed grandmother Becky notices her seatmate Matt express an interest in flight attendant Zoe. Declan and Jaya sneak into the lavatory for an intimate moment. While their parents are away, Cora sends her stepbrother Finn to the back of the plane as a prank, but he ends up befriending Matt.

During the flight, Dan’s electronic device starts a fire in the cargo hold. A catastrophic chain reaction causes the plane to violently tear apart and crash in the ocean. Hundreds die, leaving roughly 30 survivors stranded in the sinking wreckage.

With Rich pinned down, Ben and Penny realize they’ll have to amputate his leg to get the pilot free. Instead, Rich puts Ben in charge of the plane and voluntarily stays behind to go down with the aircraft. Meanwhile, despite having broken his arm, Matt and Zoe work together to rescue Becky and Finn.

Penny starts swimming to another piece of wreckage to recover the plane’s locator device. Seeing sharks in the water, Ben and Cora deploy a raft to rescue Penny, but they are too late to prevent her from being mauled to death by a shark.

Separated in the crash, Sam and Lisa reunite among other survivors in a part of the plane where a shark kills Coach Dade and Jesse. Blaming Sam for his friend’s death, Hutch tries to force Sam into the water to be killed too, but Ben stops him.

Matt leaves Zoe with Becky and Finn to swim for help. Matt finds Cora’s father Declan, but a shark kills both men.

Ben rallies the remaining survivors to collect life preservers and deploy emergency rafts. Ben also recovers the locater device, but hands it over to Dan while he rescues Cora. Dan drops the locater, which sinks into the ocean.

Sam rescues Hutch from circling sharks. The unselfish act inspires Hutch’s change of heart toward Sam. Hutch later encourages Sam to pursue his romantic interest in Lisa.

As part of another arrogant tantrum, Dan punches Ben during an argument over the situation. Ben punches back to subdue Dan.

With their section of the wreckage taking on water, Zoe swims with Finn to find a safer location. Zoe promises to return for Becky, who is unable to make the swim herself. Realizing she won’t last long enough to be rescued, Becky uses her cellphone to record an emotional message for her granddaughter. Swimming past Matt’s dead body, Zoe narrowly survives a shark attack to get her and Finn aboard a raft. Zoe falls unconscious from a bloody leg wound. Finn momentarily falls over the side of the raft, but he and Zoe both survive.

Ben has an emotional conversation with Cora, who expresses remorse over mistreating her stepbrother. This inspires Ben to rethink the way his recent behavior has impacted his own family.

With the wreckage having been seen by a plane passing overhead, a rescue chopper contacts a nearby Chinese fishing trawler for help rescuing the survivors. A rescuer is lowered down to the emergency rafts, but a shark kills the rescuer and pulls at her cable, causing the chopper to spin out and crash. The trawler arrives, but its path is impeded by a reef.

Ben realizes everyone needs to get to deeper waters so the trawler can reach them, but he suddenly sees a despondent Cora standing alone on a distant piece of wreckage. Ben bravely rescues Cora from sharks while Dan is killed during the trawler’s rescue efforts.

The survivors safely board the trawler. Sam and Lisa finally confess their feelings for each other. Cora uses Ben’s phone to find her stepbrother’s location, leading to Finn and Zoe’s rescue. Ben then uses his phone to call his relieved wife Nadine and tearfully tell his ill son he is coming home.

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Review:

It’s telling that the theatrical poster for “Deep Water” bills the film’s director, Renny Harlin, as the “director of ‘Deep Blue Sea’ and ‘Die Hard 2’,” movies that played in 1999 and 1990 respectively. Had the poster highlighted Harlin’s more recent releases instead, he would have been billed as the director of 2024-2026’s “The Strangers: Chapter X” trilogy, a trio of films so poorly received that their collective Rotten Tomatoes score totals a number lower than either of the other two titles on their own. No one can fault a PR person for wanting to focus on Harlin’s hits, but it’s hardly encouraging to remind viewers that those hits precede “Deep Water” by three decades.

So, where does “Deep Water” fit into the director’s oeuvre of 40+ films and counting? Is it closer to Harlin’s vintage ‘90s period or his throwaway thrillers of the 21st century? That depends on how much space there is in someone’s stomach for “Deep Water’s” jaw-breaking mouthfuls of predictable plot beats and ABC tropes pulled from the waters of every other shark/disaster movie already in existence.

At the start of “Deep Water,” 257 people board a commercial flight headed to Shanghai out of an LAX terminal that looks nothing like Los Angeles’ actual airport. Less than 30 of them survive a disastrous crash in the ocean. Wouldn’t you know it though, the main dozen or so of those survivors just happen to have an incidental interaction along their path to the plane that conveniently links several stereotyped strangers through a casual conversation, physical altercation, or even simple eye contact upon taking their seats.

Open eyes will instantly clock the requisite jackass whose guaranteed death is meant to be met by cheers. Ignoring repeated requests to stop smoking cigarettes, Dan lets everyone know he’s a dick right off the bat. Anyone who doesn’t already dislike him gets additional opportunities to boil their blood when Dan pushes his way past people minding their own business because he believes he takes priority. It’s also his poorly packed electronic device that starts a cargo hold fire, causing the chain reaction that puts the plane in the ocean where he’ll have no shortage of chances to continue being selfish, dangerous, and a general pain in the ass.

Others met in the meantime include feisty young Cora and her doting dad Declan. Declan recently remarried, and Cora couldn’t be colder toward her seven-year-old stepbrother Finn. Luckily for Finn, after his parents sneak away for sex in the lavatory and Cora pranks him by directing the boy to the back of the plane, Finn befriends Matt, a glasses-wearing computer nerd who brushes off his seatmate Becky when the older woman attempts to show him a picture of her granddaughter. Becky gets petty revenge after Matt notices attractive flight attendant Zoe, prompting Becky to mention she’s way out of Matt’s league.

Matt and Finn aren’t the only game-loving geeks in the aisles. There’s also Sam and Lisa, two Chinese esports teammates who can’t quite confess their mutual crush on each other. Maybe a traumatic event can spark that courage, if alpha male antics from a-hole student athlete Hutch don’t get in the way first.

Four men man the cockpit. Surprise, surprise, only top-billed Aaron Eckhart and Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley make it to the water alive. Sorry, nameless two other guys. Beef up those resumes and perhaps you’ll have better luck next time.

The losing battle the film already fights here is that ever since at least “Alive,” “Lost,” or even the “Airport” movies of the 1970s, viewers have been overexposed to umpteen airplane crashes countless times before. No matter how much a movie upgrades its FX or how a stunt gets staged, audiences are desensitized to turbulent spectacles of exploding engines and screaming passengers sucked into the air. It’s arguable whether that sentiment applies more to scenes of fuselage breaking apart or subsequent scenes where sharks take big bites out of human limbs frantically flailing underwater.

On top of that, by the point of impact in “Deep Water,” there’s no emotional magnet drawing attention toward anyone in particular among the morass of plain faces and forgotten names thrown around throughout the first act. We’ve been introduced to so many people, and they’ve been accompanied by so many alienating actions of dismissive behavior, that no one really rises as a hero worth championing. Any scene involving Aaron Eckhart or either of the young children, and there are plenty of moments when one or more of them are in mortal danger, is automatically absent of tension due to the classic fact that the main character and kids never die in dire situations, and that rule doesn’t get broken here either.

Although it still follows a routine formula, “Deep Water” has mildly more production value than most shark movies in or below its weight class. It ought to, what with the film being produced or financed by 13 different companies, three of which are cited twice in opening titles. There are also 29 different people listed with some kind of producer credit, including the director’s wife Johanna Harlin, who also appears briefly as a TSA agent, and Gene Simmons, yes that Gene Simmons.

Emerging as average fodder for some streaming service’s black hole of common content, it’s generous to score “Deep Water” down the middle at 50/100, though even that number is for shark/disaster flick fanatics only. Speaking of 50, now that it’s been more than that many years since “Jaws,” hopefully cinema will finally hit a breaking point where these movies will be forced to do something novel to keep their heads above increasingly crowded currents. “Deep Water” definitely isn’t that turning point, because it doesn’t do anything outstanding to raise this subgenre’s apparently low standards.

Review Score: 50

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