Displaying the lens-flared glaze of your grandmother’s favorite CBS prime-time procedural, Warner Bros.’ direct-to-video Deep Blue Sea 2 swims into sharksploitation-friendly waters … and sinks straight to the ocean floor. Directed by Darin Scott (Tales from the Hood 2), the belated sequel to Renny Harlin’s 1999 hit arrives with a title sequence that thinks it’s in a 007 movie, complete with a shapely scuba diver in silhouette and a jaw-droppingly horrendous ballad. A sample of the theme song’s IP-wedged lyrics:
Tread into the riptide
Falling from the light coming through
Trading dreams for nightmares
The undertow of gloom in the blue
Drowning in the deep blue sea
Folks, the movie only manages to metastasize from there.
Dr. Misty Calhoun (Danielle Savre, Boogeyman 2), a marine conservationist with a ridiculous name and a push-up bra, is offered five years’ funding to consult on a project with a big pharma firm. The research takes place at a tiny complex off the coast of South Africa. There, Rx giant Carl Durant (Michael Beach, Insidious: Chapter 2) runs intelligence-enhancing experiments on highly lethal bull sharks. He teaches them to swim in formation and obey simple commands, with the help of drugs and a training clicker not unlike the one wielded by Chris Pratt to coach dinosaurs in Jurassic World. Here, it’s clicked by Trent Slater (Rob Mayes, John Dies at the End), a living Ken doll sewn into a wetsuit.
Just as in the original film, Durant’s experiment goes awry, but now with markedly less convincing effects and the boneheaded addition of baby sharks that will remind viewers of Baby Groot. Savre, Beach and Mayes fill the movie’s respective blanks left by Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson and Thomas Jane, aping their character traits and mannerisms, yet only after stripping them to a single, flat dimension. Every scene, every story beat, every camera filter acts as a deliberate recall to Harlin’s picture; Scott even shamelessly tries to duplicate Jackson’s famed holy-shit moment. The sets look like a best-guess facsimile, were Deep Blue Sea fortunate enough to be adapted into an amusement-park attraction. All that’s missing from Scott’s wretched sequel is LL Cool J’s parrot.
Well, that’s not true — entertainment is also a no-show. Whereas I’ve seen the ’99 Deep Blue Sea three times, I barely could stomach a single viewing of Deep Blue Sea 2. I’ll give the sequel this, though: It stopped at 94 minutes instead of going to 95. —Rod Lott