Deep Blue Sea Review
by Frankie Paiva (swpstke AT aol DOT com)August 12th, 1999
Deep Blue Sea (R) ** 1/2
Starring LL Cool J, Saffron Burrows
Directed by Renny Harlin
A Review by Frankie Paiva
Hot on the heels of Lake Placid, which was more of a campy horror comedy than deadly animal horror movie, Deep Blue Sea comes to sweep us away with yet another gory creature feature.
Dr. Susan McAlester (Burrows) is a scientist whose father died of Alzheimer's, she is very close to discovering the cure from inside a shark's brain. She works at the huge Aquatica, an above and underground research lab that houses three testing sharks. One day when Carter (Thomas Jane) is out feeding the sharp-toothed animals they try to hunt him down, but swim backwards when they can't. This is met with shocking discovery as sharks can't swim backwards, the only way they could is if something slipped them something, but of course, that's against company policy.
A storm blows out all communications on the island and the group (along with Samuel L. Jackson) is caught inside the ship. Susan is up to foul play by giving the sharks more protein than they need, thus making them smarter. The sharks begin to chase and chomp everyone around, and it's an exciting rush.
LL Cool J appears as a cook, he's quite good and he steals most of the scenes he's in. It proves that there could be room for him in Hollywood as an actor. Finally there is someone in one of these movies that never gives up, and comes up with creative ways of getting away from the bad guy. Burrows also makes a good female lead and this should get her more star attention. Since there are no big actors, the film is more suspenseful than the standard horror/sci-fi flick, whereas in other movies ("OK, everyone except Jamie Lee Curtis or Sigourney Weaver get killed, etc.) where it's predictable who will live and who will die, it's all a mystery here.
People that liked Lake Placid that come to this one expecting the same laughs won't get what they are looking for. On the other hand, those expecting Lake Placid to be scary will find what they were looking for here.
In other words, if you want a thriller that doesn't require a lot of thinking, go see Deep Blue Sea, it gets my ** 1/2 stars of choice.
A Review by Frankie Paiva
The 12 Year-Old Movie Reviewer
E-Mail me at [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
