An international co-production between the United States and Mexico,[2][3]Deep Blue Sea represented a test for Harlin, who had not made a commercially successful film since Cliffhanger (1993). The film was primarily shot at Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, where the production team constructed sets above the large water tanks that had been built for James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Although the film features some shots of real sharks, most of the sharks used in the film were either animatronic or computer-generated. Trevor Rabin composed the score, while co-star LL Cool J contributed the songs "Deepest Bluest (Shark's Fin)" and "Say What" to the soundtrack.
Released on July 28, 1999, Deep Blue Sea received generally mixed reviews; some praised its suspense, pacing, and action sequences, but criticized its unoriginality and B-movie conventions. However, it has received much more praise in retrospect, and is now often cited as one of the greatest shark films of all time. It is especially lauded for its success within a limited genre dominated by Jaws (1975). It was also a commercial success, grossing $165 million worldwide[4] on a budget of $60–82 million.[4][5] The film spawned a franchise of the same name, and was followed by the direct-to-video sequels Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018) and Deep Blue Sea 3 (2020).
Plot
In a remote underwater facility, doctors Susan McCallister and Jim Whitlock are conducting research on mako sharks to help in the re-activation of dormant human brain cells like those found in Alzheimer's patients. After one of the sharks escapes the facility and attempts to attack a boat full of young adults, financial backers send corporate executive Russell Franklin to investigate the facility.
Susan and Jim prove their research is working by testing a certain protein complex that was removed from the brain tissue of their largest shark, which suddenly bites off Jim's arm upon awakening in the laboratory. Tower operator Brenda Kerns calls a helicopter that flies through heavy rain and strong winds to evacuate Jim. As Jim is being airlifted on a stretcher, the cable jams and he is dropped into the shark pen. The largest shark grabs the stretcher, which is still attached to the cable, and uses it to pull the helicopter into the tower; the resulting explosions kill Brenda and the helicopter pilots while severely damaging the facility.
Susan, Russell, shark wrangler Carter Blake, marine biologist Janice Higgins, and engineer Tom Scoggins witness the shark smash Jim's stretcher against the laboratory's main window and shatter it, drowning Jim and flooding the facility. They go to the facility's wet entry, where they plan to take a submersible to the surface. Susan confesses that she and Jim genetically engineered the sharks to increase their brain size as they were not naturally large enough to harvest sufficient amounts of the protein complex, breaking protocol and making the sharks much smarter and deadlier. In the flooded kitchen, cook Sherman "Preacher" Dudley hides in the oven from a stray shark that eats his pet parrot. The shark accidentally causes a gas leak from the oven while trying to break into it, and Preacher sneaks away and kills it by setting off an explosion with his lighter.
When the group reaches the wet entry, they discover that the submersible has been damaged and is unsuitable for use. While delivering a monologue emphasizing the need for group unity, Russell is dragged into the submersible pool by the largest shark and devoured. The remaining crew opt to climb up the elevator shaft at the risk of destabilizing the pool. As they climb, explosive tremors cause the ladder to break. Janice loses her grip and falls into the water. Despite Carter's attempt to save her, a shark drags her under and devours her.
The rest of the group move on and encounter Preacher. Carter and Tom go to the flooded laboratory to activate a control panel that drains a stairway to the surface, while Susan heads to her room to collect her research materials. Carter and Tom reach the control panel but the largest shark storms in, rips Tom apart, and damages the controls. In her room, Susan encounters another shark and electrocutes it with a power cable, accepting that she had to destroy her research in the process.
Carter, Susan, and Preacher regroup and go to a decompression chamber. They swim to the surface while using oxygen tanks to bait the last shark into an attack. Upon reaching the surface, Preacher is grabbed by the shark and suffers injuries to his leg, but the shark releases him when he stabs it in the eye with his crucifix necklace. Carter realizes that the sharks have been manipulating them to methodically flood the facility so that they can ram their way through the fences at the surface and escape into the world.
To keep the final shark from escaping, the three make a plan to blow it up by shooting it with a harpoon and connecting the harpoon's wire to a battery, sending a massive electric current to an explosive charge in the harpoon. Feeling guilty over causing the entire situation, Susan uses herself as bait without telling the others, cutting her hand before diving into the water. She distracts the shark with her blood, but is unable to get out of the water in time and is devoured, despite Carter's efforts to save her. Carter grabs onto the shark's dorsal fin and Preacher shoots it with the harpoon, which accidentally pierces Carter's thigh and pins him to the shark. Carter nevertheless orders Preacher to connect the wire to the battery, and manages to free himself mere seconds before the shark rams through the fence, where it explodes as it tries to escape.
Carter resurfaces and swims to shore, reuniting with Preacher. Moments later, as they sit on the edge, they see a rescue boat approaching the sinking facility. Carter wryly advises Preacher to stop dangling his legs in the water, which he immediately does.
Deep Blue Sea was conceived by Australian screenwriter Duncan Kennedy after he witnessed a "horrific" shark attack on a beach near his home,[5] causing a recurring nightmare in which he was "in a passageway with sharks that could read [his] mind".[5] This motivated him to write a spec script, acknowledging the challenge of approaching a shark film without repeating Steven Spielberg's Jaws.[5] Although Warner Bros. bought the script in late 1994,[6] actual development on the project did not start until two years later.[7] When Finnish director Renny Harlin was chosen to direct the film, Kennedy's screenplay (which had already been re-written by several writers at Warner Bros.) was presented to Donna Powers and Wayne Powers, who turned it into the film's final script.[6] According to Wayne, "The movie became essentially what we wrote. The draft we were first presented by [Warner Bros.] was much more of a military espionage, high-tech action movie, grenade launchers, that kind of thing. We wanted our team to include more blue-collar types and not to have weapons to fight back, to play it more as a horror film."[6]
In an August 2021 interview with Bloody Disgusting, Kennedy stated that when he initially researched the project, scientists "agreed to talk because [he] presented [the] sharks as man-made, unlike Jaws which demonized natural sharks".[8] He revealed that the original title was Deep Red before he changed it to Deep Blue Sea.[8] He described his own rewrites and those of many subsequent writers, emphasizing a "DBS team effort" and that "all of these writers made contributions that are identifiable in the final film".[8] In terms of the final product, he stated that despite major changes, "development overall stuck within the basic story framework seen in [his] original drafts" and that the final film is "very different on multiple levels [but] also in a more generalized sense... not that different".[8] He confirmed that the development timeline of the project "was in fact under three years, [which is] nothing in Hollywood development time" with the original screenplay selling in late July 1995 and production commencing in early August 1998 for a July 1999 release date.[8] He revealed that as production approached, he "helped to brainstorm ideas for sequences that weren't working" and that the film's producer Akiva Goldsman did uncredited final rewrites on the film.[8] He said that he felt "the decision to steer just a little closer to Alien in multiple ways somewhat limited the film from breaking out even bigger at the box office [...] smart sharks in 'our world' made the movie fresh, but being a little too Alien-esque overall maybe held it back".[8] However, he concluded that the final film "was very much the movie [he'd] envisioned in terms of the visuals, the world, the story journey and the audience experience".[8]
Deep Blue Sea had a budget of $60–82 million and represented a test for Harlin, who had not made a commercially successful film since Cliffhanger in 1993.[5] Harlin's main goal was to bring the horror genre back to the serious and high-budget production values of films like The Exorcist, Jaws, and The Shining, as opposed to the tongue-in-cheek style of subsequent films in the genre.[9]Alien was an influence on the casting process, as Harlin wanted to cast the characters in a way as to make it impossible for the audience to know who was going to die or survive.[9] To achieve this, he combined relatively unknown actors who could deliver solid performances and meet the physical demands of the diving and stunts with an established star such as Samuel L. Jackson, who "anchors the whole piece".[9][10] Harlin also forced the studio into hiring rapper LL Cool J because he wanted a character who could bring "a lot of warmth and humor to the film" without making outright jokes.[9]
Filming
Principal photography for Deep Blue Sea began on August 3, 1998.[11] Most of the film was shot at Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, where the production team constructed sets above the large water tanks that had been built for James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic.[11] Some of the sets were designed so that they could be submerged, while others were built on sound stages with fishtanks used as windows.[12] At Fox Baja Studios, the cast worked with sharks that were either animatronic or computer-generated.[13] As the shark used in Jaws was 25 feet long, Harlin decided to increase their animatronic shark to 26 feet.[5] Jackson recalled, "When they first brought it into the lab, we were all in awe of the size of this machine. It was a real monster. I would walk up to it slowly and touch it and they said it felt like a real shark. The gills moved and it had a mind of its own sometimes."[14] As an added homage, the license plate pulled from the shark's teeth by Carter is the same one found in the tiger shark's carcass in Jaws.[15] Three 15-foot animatronics were also used to represent the first-generation mako sharks.[16]
After the shoot at Fox Baja Studios wrapped, Harlin insisted the team go to the Bahamas to shoot with real sharks.[13] Recounting his experience there, Thomas Jane said, "The first day, I was in a cage, but the next day, they swam me 30 feet down. Then this guy yanks the breather off me and the water's churning with blood and guts and stuff. It was so terrifying that I don't want to remember it."[13] The idea was to mix footage of real sharks with animatronic and computer-generated sharks to ensure a seamless transition between them all.[17] To distinguish Deep Blue Sea from Jaws, where the shark is frequently hidden, Harlin decided to show theirs more prominently because he felt that audience expectations had changed since then.[18][9]
The scene where the cast is trying to get back to the elevator after hooking up Stellan Skarsgård's character to the helicopter is actually an accident that made it into the finished film.[14] As Jackson explained, "At one point three tons of water got thrown on us by accident and we got swept toward those cargo bays and everyone thought we were going into the drink and people were tumbling around this metal grating. We scrambled up and kept acting. That was not supposed to happen and we didn't have safety harnesses on and we were flailing around on this deck."[14] Jackson was initially offered the role played by LL Cool J, but his management team did not like the idea of him playing a cook for unknown reasons, so Harlin created his character for him.[12] LL Cool J's character was supposed to die early on, but Harlin ultimately decided to keep him and he ends up being one of only two survivors.[9] The production team could not afford to have a fully trained parrot for LL Cool J's character's pet, so they used two parrots: one that was good at flying, and another that could sit on his shoulder.[12]
The film's ending was changed shortly before its theatrical release. Originally, Burrows' character escaped from the shark and lived. However, this angered test audiences, who did not forget that she was responsible for the situation in the first place and was seen as the film's villain aside from the sharks themselves.[19] As a result, the production team did a one-day reshoot in the Universal Studios tank and some computer-generated work on the sharks to change it.[19] A fan petition was created in 2019, calling on Warner Bros. to release the original ending, and received support from Jane and Harlin.[20]
In 2009, on the film's 10th anniversary, Harlin explained that Deep Blue Sea was the hardest film he had ever made because most of the shooting days involved the team standing in water or being underwater for long periods.[21] According to him, "Just the practicality of putting a wet suit on in the morning, being in the water all day. Your script, all your paperwork has to be made of plastic paper. And things that you wouldn't think would ever float, they float. [...] Or then things that you hope would float actually sink and you can't find them anywhere."[21]
Music
The score for Deep Blue Sea was composed by Trevor Rabin and ranges from orchestral and choral arrangements to electronic soundscapes, noted for its use of both dramatic and easily accessible themes.[22] The soundtrack features two songs by LL Cool J, "Deepest Bluest (Shark's Fin)" and "Say What", which were used in the end credits; the former was written for the film, while the latter was taken from one of his albums.[23] Two soundtrack albums were also released for the film. The first album, Deep Blue Sea: Music from the Motion Picture, was released by Warner Bros. Records on August 3, 1999, and features a set of hip hop and R&B tracks by several artists, including Hi-C, Cormega, and Bass Odyssey.[23] The second album, Deep Blue Sea: Original Motion Picture Score, was released by Varèse Sarabande on August 24, 1999, and contains musical tracks by Rabin.[22]
Release
Box office
Deep Blue Sea performed well when it opened in 2,854 theaters on July 30, 1999,[24] finishing third and grossing around $18.6 million at the US weekend box office.[25] During its second weekend, the film grossed an estimated $11 million and finished in fifth place, behind The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, Runaway Bride, and The Thomas Crown Affair.[26]Deep Blue Sea grossed over $73.7 million the United States and Canada and $91.4 million internationally, grossing over $165 million worldwide.[4] The film's performance was compared to Stephen Sommers' The Mummy and Jan de Bont's The Haunting, which had a similar budget and made a significant impact on the box office in the summer of 1999.[27]
Critical response
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 60% based on 114 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Deep Blue Sea is no Jaws, but action fans seeking some toothy action can certainly do—and almost certainly have done—far worse for B-movie thrills."[28] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 54 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[29] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[30]
Writing for Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised it as "a skillful thriller", saying that it "is essentially one well-done action sequence after another [...] it doesn't linger on the special effects (some of the sharks look like cartoons), but it knows how to use timing, suspense, quick movement and [especially] surprise".[31] He concluded that the film keeps spectators guessing in an otherwise predictable genre.[31]
Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times considered Deep Blue Sea a return to form for Harlin, especially after the "dismal swamps" of Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight.[32] He described the film as "an example of how expert action filmmaking and up-to-the-minute visual effects can transcend a workmanlike script and bring excitement to conventional genre material".[32]Desson Howe of The Washington Post remarked that, while the film's premise feels familiar, it "knows its audience and knows what'll get them going—and even wondering".[33] He said that Deep Blue Sea might not be Harlin's finest two hours, but he managed to build "something that, if nothing else, gives you a great big shock every few minutes".[33] In a three-and-a-half out of four review, Robert Lasowski of The Florida Times-Union highly praised the film's pacing, intense action, and chase scenes, stating that Deep Blue Sea is "a great popcorn movie [and] what summer at the cineplex is all about".[34]
Other reviews were less enthusiastic.[35][36][37][38]Stephen Holden of The New York Times described it as "a cut-rate Titanic stripped of romance and historical resonance and fused with Jaws, shorn of mythic symbolism and without complex characters",[36] while Barbara Shulgasser of the Chicago Tribune criticized it for being an inferior imitation of Jurassic Park but praised its realistic setting and LL Cool J's performance.[37] Ian Nathan of Empire gave the film three out of five stars and criticized its B-movie conventions, stating that "you're never entirely sure whether you're laughing at or with" the film.[38] Robert Koehler of Variety felt the computer-generated sharks were inconsistently realized, but nevertheless highlighted the flooding of the facility very positively.[39] The dialogue between action sequences was also praised, especially LL Cool J's "blend of Bible talk, smack, and wit".[39] Despite his few lines, Jane was seen as a charismatic character and "a genuine new action star".[39]
Home media
Deep Blue Sea was first released on DVD on December 7, 1999, courtesy of Warner Home Video.[40] Special features include the film in a 2.35:1 anamorphic format, two behind-the-scene featurettes, five deleted scenes with extended dialogue and relationships between the characters, and an audio commentary in which Harlin and Jackson discuss the film's technical features and special effects.[41] Warner also released the film on Blu-ray on October 12, 2010,[40] which includes the same special features from the DVD release.[42] On March 18, 2025, Arrow Films released Deep Blue Sea on 4K Blu-ray.[43]
Legacy
As Jaws created a cycle of shark-oriented horror films which ended in the 1980s, Deep Blue Sea revived the cycle towards the end of the 20th century. Following the film's release, similar B-movies were released such as the Shark Attack film series, Red Water (2003), and Frankenfish (2004). Nils Bothmann observed that some of these films, such as the first two in the Shark Attack series, shared similarities with Deep Blue Sea including genetically mutated sharks or sharks that breach underwater fences, while most were still indebted to Jaws.[44]
In retrospect, the film has been viewed much more positively. In 2016, Wired editor Brian Raftery called it "the greatest non-Jaws shark movie of all time" and superior to Jaume Collet-Serra's The Shallows.[45] He remarked that, within a genre that had been dominated by Jaws, the film features "genuinely inventive" action sequences, "nicely rounded-out, human" characters, and memorable death scenes.[45] Raftery also noted that the film was among the last of its kind, describing it as "[a]n R-rated B-movie, full of gore and chaos and smart-stupidness, but with a big-budget, big-cast sheen" in a similar way to Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall and Starship Troopers, Roland Emmerich's Stargate, and Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.[45] The scene in which Jackson's character is unexpectedly grabbed by the sharks has appeared on lists of the best film deaths of all time.[46][47]
Deep Blue Sea has often been cited as one of the greatest shark films of all time. In 2012, PopMatters ranked the film third behind Jaws and Open Water, and described it as one of Harlin's "last great [films]".[48] In 2015, Den of Geek ranked it behind only Jaws and credited it for its action-packed scenes and intelligent sharks.[49] In 2017, Slant Magazine ranked it seventh and highlighted Jackson's death scene and LL Cool J's performance,[50] while Complex ranked it third, praising its talented actors and tight action sequences.[51] In 2019, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the film, the Screamfest Horror Film Festival hosted a screening at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood as part of its "Fears & Beers" program. Cast members including Jane attended a post-screening Q&A moderated by Brian Collins of Birth.Movies.Death.[52]
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