Main cast: Danielle Savre (Dr Misty Calhoun), Rob Mayes (Trent Slater), Michael Beach (Carl Durant), Nathan Lynn (Aaron Ellroy), Kim Syster (Leslie Kim), Jeremy Jess Boado (Daniel Kim), Darron Meyer (Craig Burns), Adrian Collins (Mike Shutello), and Cameron Robertson (Josh Hooper)
Director: Darin Scott
Did anyone ask for a sequel to Deep Blue Sea? If yes, Deep Blue Sea 2 is almost twenty years too late, and given that they keep people waiting this long, this one has better be awesome. Alas, while the previous movie wasn’t awesome but still was campy and entertaining enough, this one is just boring without any camp or thrill to elevate its state of meh.
Also, this year has The Meg. In that one, we have a hot-bodied Jason Statham in wetsuit, always a happy sight for happier eyes. In this one, we have a less hot-bodied, more dad-bodied Rob Mayes showing everyone that he has no ass when he struts in that wetsuit. That’s probably the biggest disappointment of this movie: it has an action hero in the forefront, but instead of a raw embodiment of scorching virility and competence, we have… this guy who is flat both on the front and the back, with the only noticeable bulge being that on his belly. A quick peek at Mr Mayes’s Instagram suggests that he is usually in better shape, so I suppose either filming was during his off days or the catering on set was really too tasty to resist.
On the bright side, Danielle Savre looks good in her wetsuit, which comes complete with cleavage, but come on, how about some equal opportunity pretty for everyone regardless of preferences?
Like most movies of this sort, this one has intelligent sharks. Pharmaceutical greedy pig Carl Durant has set up a facility in which they alter brains of bull sharks to make them smarter. Carl invites shark expert Dr Misty Calhoun over to look into a problem: the alpha shark, Bella, is behaving outside of the expected pattern, and perhaps Misty can help figure out the answer. She soon deduces that Bella is pregnant. Previous tests run on Bella failed to indicate this, but Misty knows best: soon Bella pops out some hungry baby sharks, and they along with the adult sharks—all of them super smart, remember—begin to break into the facility in search of yum-yums.
Deep Blue Sea 2 is plagued by a cast that is mostly free from charisma and screen presence, and this problem is worsened by the script giving the characters little to no memorable traits. Then again, most of the cast behave like they just want to get everything done with ASAP so that they can all go home. Misty, Trent, and Carl are the ones with the most character, or what passes for it, but even then, they feel like weak callbacks to the lead characters of the previous movie.
The scares are little, with the gore mostly obscured, so there’s not much to be had from the monster-gone-wild department as well. The sharks look a little too CGI’ed to the point of being obviously fake, and the scares and shark attack scenes all feel like they were done by the numbers. It is a bad mistake to obscure most of the kills, as it makes an already dull and mechanical movie even less interesting to watch. I know, maybe it’s a budget thing, but come on, surely there are some ways to get around this. And don’t get me started on the facility having a single button that can cause it to self-destruct.
All in all, this is a joyless, dry, and boring shark movie that forgets to include everything that would have made a typical shark movie fun. Watch the sequel, or go watch The Meg. Deep Blue Sea 2 isn’t worth the wait or the time.
