MFF Sea Beast Week: Celebrating ‘Deep Blue Sea’

The movie is essentially one well-done action sequence after another. It involves all the usual situations in movies where fierce creatures chase victims through the bowels of a ship/spacecraft/building (the “Alien” movies, “Deep Rising,” etc). It’s just that it does them well. It doesn’t linger on the special effects (some of the sharks look like cartoons), but it knows how to use timing, suspense, quick movement and surprise. Especially surprise. There is a moment in this movie when something happens that is completely unexpected, and it’s over in a flash–a done deal–and the audience laughs in delight because it was so successfully surprised. In a genre where a lot of movies are retreads of the predictable, “Deep Blue Sea” keeps you guessing.

3. It is still being talked about today.

Brian Raftery of Wired wrote a beautiful article about it recently. Here is what he said.

But as deeply satisfying as *The Shallows *might be, it’s still not the greatest non-Jaws shark movie of all time. That title belongs to Deep Blue Sea, director Renny Harlin’s 1999 sci-fi/action/horror combo about an underwater research lab whose residents become hunted by a trio of genetically modified super-sharks. It’s part haunted-house tale, part undersea-slasher flick, and part big-ensemble disaster movie, full of high-velocity attacks and ceaseless, remorseless sharks. It doesn’t have the pop gravitas of Jaws, but it does have some archetypal, yet nicely rounded-out, human characters; moments of knowing comedy; and some genuinely inventive action sequences, including one of the greatest surprise deaths in modern-movie history.

4. Stellan Skarsgard’s death scene is gnarly and intricate 

The guy endured a lot. Read this post and you will learn all about the journey.

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5. Sharks swim backward

What? No! Awesome! I love Deep Blue Sea.

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6. LL Cool J stabs a shark in the eye with a cross

I love how everything comes full circle (Preacher stabbing a shark in the eye with a cross).

7. It features the greatest song ever.

This is not hyperbole. LL Cool J crushed Deepest Bluest.

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8. The Sharks kill people in very creative ways

This is not a good way to go.

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9. They made the shark one foot longer than Jaws

Renny Harlin is a gangster and I love what Mental Floss taught me about Deep Blue Sea.

“The problem with approaching a shark movie,” Kennedy told the Los Angeles Times, “is how do you do it without repeating Jaws?” Kennedy said that in order to “do Spielberg one better,” Harlin made Deep Blue Sea’s makos 26 feet long. In real life, shortfin mako sharks reach 10 feet on average (although specimens as large as 12 feet have been caught), and longfin makos reach as long as 13.7 feet.

10. Renny Harlin is an action Maestro

Between The Long Kiss Goodnight, Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea the guy is the best. I love his crazy action films.

This scene is going to be amazing.

11. Thomas Jane rode sharks

Probably the greatest shark wrangler in film history. Dude even rides the super boss shark

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12. It features the greatest kitchen fight ever

If you eat  LL’s bird you are in for some trouble.  Check out the greatest kitchen fight post I wrote!

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13. Stephen King loves it.

King knows what’s up.