Deep Water (2026) Magenta Light/Thriller RT: 106 minutes Rated R (violent content/bloody images and some language) Director: Renny Harlin Screenplay: Pete Bridges, Shayne Armstrong, S.P. Krause and Damien Power Music: Fernando Velazquez Cinematography: D.J. Stipsen Release date: May 1, 2026 (US) Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Angus Sampson, Lucy Barrett, Molly Belle Wright, Zhao Simei, Li Wenhan, Lakota Johnson, Elijah Tamati, Richard Crouchley, Kate Fitzpatrick, Nashi, Mark Hadlow, Rarmian Newton, Madeleine West, Rob Kipa-Williams, Kelly Gale, Ryan Bown, Chrissy Jin, John De Luca, Michael Cardelle.
Rating: ***
Doofus: What do you get when you cross Airport ’77 with Jaws?
Goofus: I don’t know. What do you get when you cross Airport ’77 with Jaws?
OY! You better let me answer that one, guys. This is a film review, not a vaudeville act. Thanks for the cool intro though.
The answer is Deep Water, the latest film from Renny Harlin whose most recent contribution to cinema is the tepid Strangers horror trilogy. The Finnish filmmaker follows it up with this survival thriller featuring an assortment of characters who find themselves in deep something else after their plane crashes into the ocean. Not only are they stranded, they’re surrounded by sharks. Now do you see what Doofus and Goofus were talking about?
It was supposed to be a routine flight from L.A. to Shanghai. That’s not what fate has in store for the crew and passengers. It all starts with a fire in the cargo hold caused by an improperly stored power bank in a passenger’s suitcase. It causes an explosion that destroys an engine. The pilot (Kingsley, Gandhi) has no choice but to make an emergency landing right in the middle of the ocean. The plane is reduced to wreckage after it strikes a coral reef. This is just the beginning of the survivors’ troubles.
The group, now led by the co-pilot Ben (Eckhart, The Dark Knight), quickly learns there are sharks lurking about and they’re hungry. On top of that, the parts of the plane are sinking into the water. Their only hope is to be rescued before all is lost.
Like any good disaster movie, Deep Water has an interesting assortment of characters, some of whom will make it and some of whom won’t. They include this guy named Dan (Sampson, the Insidious films), a rude and selfish a**hole who truly believes the rules of airline travel don’t apply to him. BTW, he’s the owner of the suitcase that caused the catastrophe. There’s Cora (Wright, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever), a young girl more worried about finding her little stepbrother (Tamati, Dead Ahead) than her own survival. The boy is in the care of a computer geek (Crouchley, Evil Dead Rise), an elderly British woman (Fitzpatrick, The Return of Captain Invincible) and a flight attendant (Nashi, The Litchi Road). There’s a pair of esports players, Sam (Wenhan) and Lilly (Simei, Love Is True), who like each other as more than teammates. Another athlete on board, an aggressive fellow named Hutch (Johnson, Neighbors), has some kind of grudge against them.
I won’t sugarcoat it. Deep Water is a bad movie. Not a single frame of it is original. In addition to the two disaster films already mentioned, it borrows ideas from The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). Somebody even directly references the former by referring to the older British woman as Shelley Winters as they try to climb out of a section of the plane. The screenplay (credited to four writers) is one cliché after another. The acting is bad enough when taken on its own, but the dialogue they’re given to recite raises it to the next level. The CGI is just plain awful. It makes the effects in Meteor (1979) look state of the art. It makes me wonder what the makers spent the $40M budget on.
But here’s the thing about Deep Water. It’s bad, but not the kind of bad that renders the movie unwatchable. On the contrary, it’s very entertaining. It’s kind of fun actually. The whole thing is absolutely laughable. All of it is just so ludicrous. There are a great many scenes I could point out, but the one that sticks out in my mind is when a shark attacks a rescue worker and the helicopter lowering him into the water. It was supremely silly in Jaws 2 (1978) and it’s supremely silly once again in Deep Water. Of course, Bruce II looks a hell of a lot more convincing than the CG sharks here.
If I dislike anything about Deep Water, it’s the cast. Hear me out. One of the coolest thing about the 70s disaster movies was the all-star casts of mostly B-listers. Come on, you remember those neat posters with the actors’ faces in little boxes (“And Henry Fonda as The President”). You loved it, don’t lie. It would have been cool if Harlin had done this with Deep Water, but he doesn’t. I don’t know who most of these people are. I’m sure he could have rounded up some recognizable players.
I had fun with Deep Water. It made for enjoyable Saturday night viewing. I laughed plenty albeit for the wrong reasons. I took great delight in the dopiness of the whole affair. It’s no masterpiece and it will never be regarded as a classic, but it’s solid entertainment if you keep your expectations low.
