If done right, a disaster movie can scratch a cinematic itch like nothing else, serving up sentimentality, suspense and schadenfreude in tidy parcels of action. Deep Water, in which an American plane full of minor movie stars crashes in shark-infested waters, knows exactly what it’s doing even as it nods towards a number of predecessors.
For starters, the poster pays homage to, or steals from, Jaws with its images of tiny swimmers up top and a big toothy shark heading up from the depths below. Later on, an older woman is jokingly likened to Shelley Winters, a the Oscar-winning actor remembered for swimming for her life in the disaster classic The Poseidon Adventure. Best of all, the film brazenly eggs viewers on to wish and pray that the schlubby, obnoxious and constantly cigarette-seeking US guy (Angus Sampson, a hoot) will get to become shark chum before the credits roll.
You will have to watch to find out if he does, but the film plays a good game of existential roulette, randomly killing off nice and nasty people alike. For example, there are some couples (and potential couples) we are clearly meant to root for, including a pair of e-sports teammates (Li Wenhan and Zhao Simei), a flight attendant (Nashi) and a nerdy nice guy (Richard Crouchley) treading water, but only one set makes it out alive. More predictable is the fate of the biggest names in the cast, pilots played by Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley, whose actuarial chances of survival conform to the cinematic laws of the jungle.
Director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight) was once the biggest thing in movies but then suffered a spectacular fall from grace (courtesy of Cutthroat Island); he actually does a bang-up job here. Admittedly, Harlin fails to get dialogue from the seven credited screenwriters listed that isn’t riddled with cliches, but he has always had a real gift for kinetic action sequences.
The big plane crash is a doozy, one that starts with people getting sucked out of holes in the hull and ends with surging sea water and 200 or so mangled extras. Plus, as the maker of Deep Blue Sea, Harlin also knows how to wrangle a fake shark. Smartly, we never see too much of them, mostly they’re just grey fins poking menacingly out of the water or backlit silhouettes surging up from the depths, but they are definitely very bitey little beasts.
• Deep Water is on digital platforms from 20 July
