Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018)

I have just finished watching Deep Blue Sea 2 and I am already struggling to write this review, mainly because I have immediately forgotten everything that happened. That is not a comment that reflects my memory, even if I do have my occasional moments of forgetting where I placed my headphones that are still lodged at my ears. No, it's a comment on just how absolutely forgettable this film is. It's also quite dire, but just not in any memorable way.

You may disagree with me, I cannot even recall the general consensus at this point, but Deep Blue Sea was/is an excellent shark movie. It was Renny Harlin before he went off the boil, and he had a hell of a run, it was a decent enough cast, and it had that great idea of sharks coming in to an indoor environment.

Which makes this sequel, really just an inferior retread, all the more disappointing. They even directly lift a number of moments from the first film, all of them done far less effectively.

Danielle Savre plays Misty Calhoun, a shark expert taken along with some other people to a base in the middle of the sea that is doing some important science stuff with sharks. The experiments are continuing thanks to an amoral rich guy named Carl Durant (Michael Beach) and it's not long until things go wrong, prompting the rich guy to become more and more outright evil as he attempts to save face, and his own skin.

Director Darin Scott already has a number of features under his belt, a number of them TV movies, but you wouldn't know it from this amateurish effort. Okay, to be fair, there's a very basic degree of competence here, overshadowed by the weak script (by Erik Patterson, Hans Rodionoff, and Jessica Scott - who all clearly just watched the first film and then set out to make it worse, and cheaper), but it's nowhere near the level that it should be. I'm used to watching cheap shark films with dodgy CGI, and I have been spoiled recently with some great shark films that have excellent effects in them. This sits somewhere in the middle. Some of the FX work is decent enough but too many moments just feel rushed and lacking, especially when being displayed in the scenes that should be highlights.

I started this review by mentioning how forgettable the film is and that is emphasised by the cast, none of whom make any impression whatsoever, good or bad. Savre is left adrift, no pun intended, while Beach is given a character so one-note that you're just waiting for him to meet his obvious fate. As for everyone else? Nope. I couldn't even pick them out of a line-up right now. Which might work in their favour when they move on to future projects.

When an entire movie manages to be more wooden and boring than the performance from Saffron Burrows in Deep Blue Sea then you know that's not a good thing. This is definitely one to avoid.

2/10

Available on various streaming services, here is the DVD for American shark fans.