Twenty-five years ago this week, an under-the-radar action movie swam into theaters as the comeback project of director Renny Harlin and became an unexpected late-summer hit. Although Harlin had established himself with films like Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, he also directed Cutthroat Island, a pirate flick that lost so much money that it helped sink a studio. By 1999, Harlin hadn’t had a true hit for six years until Deep Blue Sea gave it to him.
Harlin and his collaborators brought together a first-rate cast for the film, including Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Stellan Skarsgård, Michael Rapaport, and even LL Cool J in one of his earliest roles. At the time, only Jackson was a certified movie star, but Deep Blue Sea helped these performers go on to even bigger things.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Deep Blue Sea, we’re sharing the five reasons why it’s one of the best summer blockbusters.
It’s got an audacious and intriguing premise
Killer shark movies are nothing new in Hollywood, and Jaws is still one of the all-time greats in that category. Deep Blue Sea shook up the standard shark premise by revealing that these were more deadly than ordinary sharks. Scientists at a remote ocean facility inadvertently made its shark test subjects into intelligent predators while researching chemicals in their brains that could fight Alzheimer’s disease.
Once the sharks are smart enough, they decide to make their escape even if they have to kill every human left in the facility. It’s a ludicrous premise, but the film never shies away from it. This is the story it wants to tell, and it does it well.
The action is suspenseful and surprising
One of the key reasons why Deep Blue Sea is such an effective thriller is that the smart sharks have a tendency to strike when least expected. Once the sharks’ escape plan is in motion, they don’t pass up opportunities to whittle down their human captors one by one.
If you’ve ever seen any horror movies, it’s not that difficult to guess which characters are going to die first. The joy of this film is watching the humans meet their fate in sudden and sometimes even shocking ways. Deep Blue Sea successfully keeps its audience in suspense for most of its runtime, and it’s even got exciting action sequences to hold our attention.
Samuel L. Jackson’s impassioned speech
Early in the film, Deep Blue Sea introduces Samuel L. Jackson as Russell Franklin, a corporate executive who survived a previous disaster on ice under enigmatic circumstances. That’s just a small piece of backstory until Russell brings it up during his big speech in the film. Just as the survivors are starting to turn on each other, Russell commands the room and reveals more details about his earlier ordeal to make a point that they have to stick together.
The other characters are all transfixed on Jackson in this scene because of his impassioned delivery and the way he’s laying out a common sense way to deal with the emergency. To say anymore about the scene would ruin it for first-time viewers, but it’s arguably the best part of the movie.
The smart sharks are fun villains
There are limits to the sharks’ intelligence, of course. At no point are any of the sharks smart enough to actually communicate with humans. They’re not really interested in the people stationed at the facility except for their potential as a food source. Anyone unfortunate enough to be taken by the sharks meets the same grizzly fate.
Any good villain needs a good hero as well, and Deep Blue Sea has two. There’s the hyper-competent shark wrangler Carter Blake (Jane) and the facility’s cook, Sherman “Preacher” Dudleyarlin (LL Cool J), They get most of the shark encounters, and it’s satisfying to see them narrowly survive each time.
Deep Blue Sea gives the audience what it wants
There’s a scene late in the movie that contrives a flimsy reason for Saffron Burrows’ Dr. Susan McCallister to be in her underwear in order to survive a shark attack. It’s one of the more unintentionally hilarious moments in the movie because it feels like it was added just to give the film more sex appeal.
One thing that was definitely changed was the ending of Susan’s story, because test audiences saw her as a villain who deserved to be punished for making the sharks smart … even though she had altruistic intentions.
Thus the final version of the film gives Susan some redemption for her hubris, and more importantly, it gives the audience what it wants. Deep Blue Sea delivers on its promises, and that’s why it’s one of the best summer blockbusters.
Watch Deep Blue Sea on Max.
