Deep Blue Sea 2 – A review

A group of scientists are invited onto a deep sea base by an eccentric millionaire who made his fortune specializing in biological advancements drugs. This time ‘round he has decided to use bull sharks to test/extract a new brain-enhancement drug aimed at increasing intelligence. Naturally this all goes sour the minute the sharks become too intelligent.

Deep Blue Sea 2 is bad in every way a sequel is often bad. Five minutes in it becomes all too clear that this movie had almost no budget for the sets and effects, let alone hire capable actors.

So let me just go down the list and tell you everything that is (hilariously) wrong with this picture.

Or just watch the trailer –it’s equally terrible.

The story and the screenplay.

The actual words the people are saying are reasonably okay. There is some nice character-defining work hidden between the ‘Ooh’s’, ‘Aah’s’ and ‘Swim!’.

In fact the only piece of dialogue that had me rolling my eyes (something about robots taking over the world) was said by someone clearly insane by that time. So that's forgivable.

It is, however, the story that is ludicrously inept. Just the idea of using sharks as a medicine-machine was already flimsy in the 1999 original. Now, twenty years later, it’s just insane.

But I could’ve accepted that if that was the only flaw. However, as always in these kinds of stories, it is the cause and effect trail that requires a ludicrous amount of suspension of disbelief. Or grain of salt as I often put it (a bucket of salt in the case of this movie).

There are all kinds of professional people working at the station who are hilariously incapable of their job. The master of operations doesn’t know about a maintenance shaft. Nor does he try to prevent a fire from breaking out. The master of security actually being oblivious of the fact that five sharks escaped. Or, the shark-biologist saying things about sharks that are so out there it makes me question her doctorate (not to mention her persistent belief that one can out swim a shark).

Then, when danger gets real, all the characters suddenly forget logic all together. Like forgetting about the whole pendant-apparatus thingy that was such a big deal in the first twenty-minutes or so.

And that’s even before the movie springs ‘hyper intelligent piranha baby sharks’ on us.

Isn’t it so that sharks eat their brothers and sisters in the womb?
Edit: I checked it this only appears to be for tiger sharks. Bull sharks give birth to 1 to 3 younglings.

The acting

The acting is fine by most of the actors –truly. But then there are one or two who are just so terribly bad at their job it’s even more horror to witness than the things the sharks do. If overacting could win a prize this movie wins gold. As one character took the words right out of my mouth: “Just let me die!”

The directing

The directing has its charms every once in awhile. The whole green, blue and red palette is a nice touch. But then it goes all out with putting DNA-schematic layers over the screen the minute somebody takes medicine. It’s that kind of stuff all the time. A nice establishing-shot only to be followed up by a weird angle shot. Some tension building followed by a sudden voice-over.

Not to mention the copious amount of the main actress in her undies or
with the zipper of her wetsuit down. This was just getting silly.

The effects

This movie had no budget whatsoever. Each and every shark looks fake (especially compared to the  real-life footage). The death-scenes then are cut in such a way that it appears that the actors are involved (the editing is a plus in this movie – making something somewhat worthwhile from what got handed) while they really aren’t.

This lack of budget is actually the most apparent when you look at the set itself. You never see characters enter some sort of lift to get to the deep see lab. There is a moment when all the characters get scattered around across the rig where you need see exactly how this happens yet you don’t.

You can make a monster movie with limited money (Spielberg did it, James Wann does it all the time):
you simply don’t show the monster too often and get one heck of a script together.

In fact, this is the one thing I want people to take from Deep Blue Sea 2:

Watch this movie and just make a mental list where the moviemakers had to cut financial corners. A little mind-game if you will.

Anyway, around the time the movie sprung ‘hyper intelligent piranha baby sharks’ on me I gave up and directed part of my attention on writing this little ditty of a review. You should too.

Conclusion

Normally I can see a potential diamond in the rough in the worst kinds of movies. In Deep Blue Sea 2 it was the red/blue/green moment in the tunnels (and I liked the computer guy). But in the end it is only a speck of diamond dust hidden inside a very big sinking rock.