So when I heard Harlin was back with another plane-crash-sharks-eating-people movie? Produced by Gene Simmons from Kiss? With six — SIX — screenwriters? I thought: yes. This is either going to be amazing or a beautiful disaster.
Turns out it’s neither. It’s just kind of… there. Floating. Like a dead guy in the water. Which, to be fair, there are a lot of those in this movie.
The first fifteen minutes rule, though. I have to give credit where it’s due. The plane breaking apart midair? Genuinely well done. Bodies getting sucked out, metal twisting, the whole Lost pilot energy. For a moment I thought, okay, Harlin still has it. He knows how to disorient you, how to make you feel the terror of falling from the sky while strapped to a exploding metal tube.
And then the ocean happens.
And then the movie forgets to be interesting.
Here’s my biggest problem: I didn’t care about a single person on that plane. Not one. There’s an elderly woman scrolling Facebook on her iPad. There’s a Chinese e-sports team having the most awkward romance I’ve ever seen. There’s a jock who exists purely to flex and then die. And there’s this couple. I am not joking, who leave their infants alone in their seats so they can go join the Mile High Club. Right before the plane breaks apart. The babies are fine, somehow, but then they’re floating in the ocean surrounded by sharks, and the movie expects me to feel something? I don’t even know those kids’ names. I don’t think the movie knows their names.
That couple? Honestly, they deserved to get eaten. I said what I said.
Aaron Eckhart is trying so hard. You can see it in his eyes. He’s doing this quiet, headstrong thing, the dignified co-pilot who lost his best friend (Ben Kingsley, who is literally just standing there like a green-screen ghost) and now has to save a bunch of strangers. Eckhart was in Sully, remember? He knows this territory. But even he can’t make me care about a cast this forgettable. He’s swimming around, giving heroic speeches, pulling people onto floating wreckage, and I’m just thinking… why? Let them float away, Aaron. It’s fine. The movie won’t miss them.
The sharks are boring. I never thought I’d write that sentence about a Renny Harlin shark movie. Deep Blue Sea gave us sharks with personality. Those things were calculated. They hunted together. They seemed to enjoy outsmarting humans. The sharks here are basically animatronics with laggy WiFi. They show up, someone gets chomped, blood clouds the water, repeat. No tension. No dread. Just… scheduled eating.
You know how in Jaws, the shark is barely on screen but you feel it everywhere? Yeah, this is the opposite. The sharks are on screen constantly and I felt nothing. That’s a failure.
The digital effects are rough. And look, I’m not expecting Avatar here. This is a mid-budget genre movie produced by the bassist from Kiss. I get it. But Harlin used to be a master of real chaos. Cliffhanger felt dangerous. Die Hard 2 had weight. Even Deep Blue Sea — for all its ridiculousness — felt like people were actually in water, actually scared, actually fighting for their lives. Deep Water looks like a video game cutscene from 2012. The ocean is too clean. The wreckage floats too perfectly. The sharks move like they’re on rails.
It’s artificial in a way that kills the fun.
That said, I wasn’t bored. There’s something to be said for a movie that just keeps throwing nonsense at you. Horny parents? Sure. Babies in the ocean? Why not. A Chinese e-sports romance subplot that goes absolutely nowhere? Let’s do it. Six screenwriters means six different people’s bad ideas made it into the final cut, and honestly? That’s kind of beautiful. It’s a mess, but it’s a sincere mess.
Who is this for? Honestly? People who watch disaster movies while scrolling their phones. People who put Sharknado on in the background during parties. People who miss 90s action cinema but forgot why it worked — because 90s action had personality, not just chaos. If you want a good plane crash movie, watch Society of the Snow on Netflix and prepare to cry. If you want a good shark movie, watch Jaws again. Or hell, watch Deep Blue Sea and enjoy LL Cool J rapping about sharks.
If you want to watch Aaron Eckhart swim around a fake ocean for ninety minutes while disposable people get eaten in forgettable ways? Deep Water is right there.
Deep Water (2026) Parents Guide
Rated R for violent content/bloody images and some language.
Let me be straight with you: this is not a shark movie for kids. It’s not even a shark movie for teenagers who get scared easily. Renny Harlin is back doing what he does best tearing people apart in creative, bloody ways and the MPAA did not mess around with that R rating.
Violence & Intensity: The plane crash sequence alone is intense we’re talking bodies getting sucked out of a depressurized cabin, metal shrapnel tearing through seats, people getting crushed, sliced, or thrown into the ocean from 30,000 feet. It’s graphic but not overly gory during the crash itself. The chaos is more the point.
You see people get bitten in half. Blood clouds the water in almost every action scene. One character gets pulled under screaming while another watches from ten feet away. Another gets chomped while reaching for a floating life vest. It’s brutal, it’s frequent, and it’s presented pretty seriously — not campy like Sharknado, more like The Shallows with a higher body count.
Language : Nothing shocking here for an R rating. You’ll hear “fuck” maybe a dozen times, usually shouted during shark attacks or moments of panic. “Shit,” “damn,” and “hell” are common. No racial slurs that I caught. The language is exactly what you’d expect from a bunch of terrified people floating in the ocean while their friends get eaten, stressed, loud, and not creative.
Sexual Content / Nudity: Surprisingly light given the setup. There’s no nudity. No sex scenes.
What you do get: a couple disappears mid-flight to join the Mile High Club, leaving their infants behind in their seats. You don’t see anything — just them walking toward the bathroom with a goofy smirk, and then the plane breaks apart before anything happens. It’s played for dark comedy more than arousal. A few other characters flirt or make desperate, terrified comments about “never getting laid again” before the sharks arrive. That’s it.
Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: One character has a flask that gets passed around early in the flight, you see a couple of sips before the crash. A background character smokes a cigarette on the tarmac during a pre-flight scene. That’s essentially it.
Age Recommendations: Not for anyone under 15, period. The violence is too frequent, too bloody, and too mean-spirited for middle schoolers. If your kid is 15 or 16 and has seen R-rated horror before (The Conjuring, A Quiet Place, Alien), they’ll probably handle it, but expect nightmares about sharks for a few nights.
Final thought: I wanted to love this. I really did. But it’s the cinematic equivalent of airplane food — technically edible, technically a meal, but you only consume it because you’re trapped at 30,000 feet and there are no other options.
Rating: 5/10? 4/10? I honestly don’t know. I’ve already forgotten half of it while writing this review. That’s probably your answer.
