A small group of scientists is trying to find a cure for Alzheimers disease by genetically enhancing the brains of live sharks and then using the resulting brain tissue to cure whatever it is that the disease does to human brains. They are working in a kind of half-floating half underwater laboratory and are led by the obsessed Susan McAllister (played by Saffron Burrows) who watched her father die of Alzheimers and is now ruthlessly trying to find a cure. When one of the sharks escapes and almost eats a boatful of teenagers, the project's financial backers decide to pull out. On the verge of a breakthrough, Susan tries to keep the facility open just a few more days so they can complete the research, and she invites one of the backers, Russell Franklin (played by Samuel L. Jackson) to visit the facility for the weekend. And, of course, that's when things start to go horribly pear-shaped. The trouble with enhancing sharks' brains is that the sharks get smart, and they seem to be able to plan, reason and logically think through the best way of killing off all the humans so they can get free. After a violent storm and a helicopter accident, our vivisectionist heroes soon find themselves trapped in the flooded and burning wreckage of the base, and we follow them in their desperate race against time to escape to the surface of the deep blue sea.
This film is a real action-adventure, packed with explosions, rushing water and monsters,
and although I'm not too much a fan of such films which always seem to have a standard plot mechanism, this one kept me guessing. At no time was I able to predict what was going to happen next, and that kept me interested. Just when I thought all was well, a shark appeared from nowhere and ate someone, and I could never have guessed who it would be. I can usually tell who will live and who will die in films like this, but not so in Deep Blue Sea. Indeed, Renny kept me guessing right until the end, and even at the last frame of the film I wasn't sure that the survivors had really survived... did they get all the sharks, or did one get away?
All in all, a nice piece of film-making — and don't forget to keep a look out for the Finnish flag.