Great White Fun
Summary
Into the Deep is a fin ride (not sorry) with enough action and gruesome kills to keep things moving. It’s hard to do anything new with shark films but this manages to keep things tense with a memorable and hateful villain.
Plot: Modern day pirates, on the hunt for sunken drugs, kidnap a boat of tourists and force them to dive into shark infested waters to retrieve the contraband.
Review: I’ve been meaning to watch Into the Deep since it came out in June; just been too much going on so it’s been nice to finally catch up with things. This has been a good year for shark movies with Beast of War and now this.
From director Christian Sesma and writers Chad Law and Josh Ridgway Into the Deep tells the story of Cassidy (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Gregg Branham (Callum McGowan) who are on vacation to do some treasure hunting.
Cassidy had a childhood trauma involving sharks, so she has had a phobia ever since. In a nice little change from the usual shark fare, some pirates show up searching for some lost drugs and Cassidy and the group of divers are held hostage. It’s up to Cassidy to help them recover the drugs or else her husband and friends will be shark bait.
At just under 90 minutes Into the Deep is tense from the start with a convincingly gruesome shark attack and is well paced for the brisk runtime.
I wanted to make sure I watched this movie before this weekend as I am with any luck meeting Richard Dreyfuss who stars as Cassidy’s grandfather. It’s a sizeable role and he previously worked with Sesma on Every Last One of Them. He gives a speech over the end credits about shark conservation which was fascinating as well as disturbing.
The main characters were appealing rather than the usual shark fodder, so we were actually rooting for them the whole time.
Jon Seda shines as the main villain Jordan Devane who is an absolute piece of garbage; his comeuppance is satisfying though. It’s also cool to see Ron Smoorenberg in a small role as Chucky (not that one).
The sharks look great and the effects in general are much better than say Deep Blue Sea which still remains one of my favourite shark movies.
On the action front there are some fight scenes, shoot-outs and of course shark related kills making this an easy watch.
Overall, Into the Deep is a tense affair with some gruesome kills and enough action to keep things tightly paced. It might well be director Christian Sesma’s best picture yet and a hugely enjoyable shark flick.