Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.
Ever since Jaws, directors and producers have tried to recapture that magic. Sharks are a natural choice for this because, as Hooper tells us in the 1975 classic, sharks are a miracle of evolution—all they do is swim, eat, and make baby sharks. Over and over, filmmakers have failed to make sharks as interesting as Spielberg did, but Renny Harlin tried in 1999 with Deep Blue Sea. This film is kind of a genre mash-up. It’s clearly a man vs. nature film with nature in the form of a trio of sharks, but it’s also a science gone wild film and has a lot of similarities with a haunted house movie as well.
Research scientists on an offshore floating laboratory are doing work with sharks to find a cure for (among other things) Alzheimer’s. Why sharks? Because, we are told, sharks are primordial creatures that don’t get cancer or terrible illnesses. Why Alzheimer’s? Because one of our lead scientists has a personal family grudge against the ailment. The problem is that one of the sharks got loose and had to be corralled, and now the really rich dude funding them (Samuel L. Jackson) is ready to pull the plug. Our scientist-in-charge, Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) makes the case for needing 48 hours to get results. Our rich benefactor, in all of his Samuel L. Jackson glory, goes back to the lab with her to see what is going on.
