In recent years there have been several "shockers" like Scream in the cinemas. They perfectly recreated the whole genre. But now Renny Harlin has taken three steps backwards - back to "Jaws" or "Anaconda". Of course the film has got much more modern computer animation but the story is very primitive: Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows, on the picture) is working on a method of gene manipulation. She runs tests with so called "harmless" sharks, and suddenly they supposed to be mutated into some kind of giant horror monsters killing the crew of the research station one after another to reach their target: The "Deep Blue Sea" - liberty.
On the station everything is burning and exploding. And 80 feet below the humans are screaming and running, trying to escape from the water which is breaking into the station. Titanic calls.

There doen't seem to be any logic during the whole film - but that doesn't really matter. The pale characters with their mad dialogues have already completed that bad impression. Obviously varying between authority and iability, Samuel L. Jackson fails pitifully in his attempt to portray Russell Franklin, the man in the background who funds the experiments.
Only Ll Cool J. gives a good performance in his consistently drawn character of the cook. He seems to identify himself perfectly with Sherman "Priest" Dudley (the first cook baked in his own oven): Quick-wittedly he ignores the empty dialogues of the other actors. And he needn't say anything in the boring "moral discussion" about gene manipulation in general, in detail and in fact.

But there are a few more positive aspects: The tension is very high. The "shock-effects" are well designed and performed. And the unusual "fish-eye-like" under water camera travels together with the genre-typical soundtrack to give "Deep Blue Sea" a little bit more atmosphere than other movies of this genre have.