Into the Deep opens in select theaters and debuts on digital and on-demand Friday, January 24.
Filmmakers, I’m begging you. Stop trying to capitalize on shark-horror hype if you can’t pull off adequate digital effects. Christian Sesma’s Into the Deep is the latest on a growing list of smaller-scale shark-attack movies that are more than underwhelming; they’re insulting. It’s one thing to stomach the no-budget CG of a Sharktopus rerun on Syfy. The problem with movies like Into the Deep, The Black Demon, and Maneater is that you’re paying in-theater or at-home rental prices for the same low quality. The dialogue is brainless, the story is sloppily absurd, and the sharks are giving Temu Deep Blue Sea. Yeah, Into the Deep is another tragic “fin flick.”
Scout Taylor-Compton of Rob Zombie’s Halloween(s) fame stars as Cassidy Branham, a traumatized wife with a rational fear of sharks. Into the Deep routinely flashes back to Cassidy’s childhood, when a rogue great white devoured her father (an unintentionally hilarious and overlong memory). Cassidy’s finally ready to face her fears by accompanying hubby Gregg (Callum McGowan) on a diving expedition to locate sunken treasures. Things go well for approximately 5 seconds under the oversight of skipper Daemon (Stuart Townsend) before sharks attack his divers. Then pirates commandeer Daemon’s ratty vessel and demand Cassidy, Gregg, and other tagalongs retrieve their underwater drug stash. It’s all very silly – and that’s only the start.
Now, being silly isn’t a problem, and it helps Into the Deep avoid the doldrums of stranded persons bobbing like oceanic snacks for 90 minutes. Jon Seda’s cajun-flavored pirate captain, Jordan Devane, is an ex-Navy specialist turned maritime criminal who isn’t afraid to play up his character’s bargain-bin villainy. The unnecessary shootouts he orchestrates, the additional threat he represents, and the predictability of his cruelty – it’s ridiculous enough to amuse. What disappointed me is how often writers Chad Law and Josh Ridgway’s story, at the mercy of its inexplicably erratic pacing, veers only to chomp another victim or show off the movie’s toothy eyesores.
Into the Deep flunks Shark Horror 101. Anyone tuning into Sesma’s drug-smuggling, antique-hunting thriller is hoping to see some halfway believable approximation of nature’s perfect predator, but what they’ll get are pixelated great whites that aren’t even cleanly layered into scenes. They may as well be cardboard cutouts taped to your screen – as dreadfully fake as the blood clouds that bloom among the splashing actors mimicking being eaten. You can’t phone in the fins, certainly not nine years after The Shallows showed you could pull this sort of thing off with CG. I’d go as far as to say Into the Deep appears visually unfinished, like the effects budget went poof and producers shipped it to theaters, digital, and on-demand anyway.
There’s a carelessness on display here. Visual dreck is one thing, but Sesma struggles to synch the sounds of yelps and comical "I swear I’m dying!" arm flails. Nor did he seem to attempt practical exhaust fumes on set, instead pumping in a garish post-production smog that adds another layer of cheapness to Into the Deep. Cinematographer Niccolo De La Fere is playing an unwinnable hand because even if his camera remains steady on the water, what’s captured is ugly enough to ruin the mood. The colors onscreen are unnatural, the shark skins glisten like they’ve been embossed in Photoshop, and the flesh-and-blood actors fail to mesh with their digital, aquatic co-stars.
Sesma’s hardly in control of his ship, and has trouble navigating the story’s tonal shifts, too. Jaws’ own Richard Dreyfuss surfaces as Cassidy’s oceanographer grandfather, Seamus, but rather than porting over some gravitas from the granddaddy of all shark movies, flashbacks featuring the Oscar winner derail what little momentum Into the Deep has. One minute, Jordan’s ordering his bulletproof-vested henchmen to gun down Coast Guard officials like they’re extras in a grindhouse oddity. The next? Seamus teaches Cassidy not to fear the water in an emotionally dull rewind. Cassidy has a full-blown meltdown when she sees a shark diving cage, and then a few seconds later, she’s swimming for shipwreck scraps without a care. It’s all so nonsensical, from the characters who topple overboard completely unharmed versus the ones who are digested, to Cassidy beckoning a shark to her side with seemingly Aquawoman-like powers.
Taylor-Compton’s multifaceted performance is set adrift in a sea of incompetence. She’s playing the suffering child, the heroic badass, and more, but Law and Ridgway fail to unite these sides of her character. And the many components that make up Into the Deep have been done better before: the diving expedition gone wrong in 47 Meters Down, the nautical intruders in Deep Blue Sea 3 (where they're mercenaries rather than pirates). May this concrete-footed letdown sink to pitch-black depths never to be seen again.
