Director: Darin Scott
Writer: Hans Rodionoff, Erik Patterson, Jessica Scott (Screenplay)
Starring: Danielle Savre, Rob Mayes, Michael Beach, Nathan Lynn, Kim Syster, Jeremy Boado, Adrian Collins
Plot: A brilliant billionaire creates five genetically altered bull sharks, which proceed to wreak havoc for a group of scientists on an isolated research facility.
Tagline – Return to the deep… if you dare
Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Deep Blue Sea 2 starts when shark conservationist Misty Calhoun (Savre), Leslie Kim (Syster) and Daniel Kim (Boado) are recruited by ambitious billionaire Carl Durant (Beach) to oversea the research he has been conducting on bull sharks.
When the latest research project gets underway, the sharks look to get their revenge, trapping the humans in the sinking complex, looking to hunt them down, Misty and Trent (Mayes) must use their expertise to save as many as possible.
Thoughts on Deep Blue Sea 2
Characters & Performances – Misty Calhoun has been working with sharks her whole life, she has been teaching people that they are not the monsters of the sea, they are only a threat if you let them become one. She isn’t happy with what is being done in this facility, wanting to find out why she was selected to be part of the team looking into the action and she will need to use her own knowledge to find a way to survive. Danielle Savre does well in her leading role, while the character might not be as well written as the original film, the performance does the best she can with it. Trent Slater is the man that handles the sharks, he has become suspicious of how dangerous they have become needing to figure out how to get the message through to the people that matter. Much like the character played by Thomas Jane, this is the one that can have the most experience in the water with the sharks. Rob Mayes however does all her can with a character that seems like there is meant to be a lot more about, but never gets to be fully unleashed with the cool action scenes. Carl Durant is the billionaire with the ambition to increase human intelligence, using the sharks to experiment on, he sees himself as a visionary that could change the world, putting people in harms way for his own escape. Michael Beach does make this the role you will remember, just because of how much of an asshole he is in the film. The rest of the characters are the typical ones we would expect to see in this situations, with one always finding their way to safety no matter what, with the performances being fine, without making the impact.
Story – The story here follows a couple of scientists that are recruited to look over a project involving sharks, which will see a drug being developed to improve intelligence, not only in sharks, but for humans in the future and the sharks decide they will not wait for the truth. This story does end up feeling like a carbon copy of the original, with the main difference being the reason behind the experiment. It is the sharks fighting back, the base slowly sinking and the race to escape being what is going on. The characters are not written as strongly, the motivation isn’t as interesting, the only positive from the story comes from the baby sharks added, being potentially more dangerous.
Themes – Deep Blue Sea 2 is an action horror that will be filled with survival against shark and water in a base, in the middle of the ocean. Seems easy enough to get behind, it does have strong special effects when it comes to the injuries, but not the actual shark attacks, with a lot happening off camera.
Deep Blue Sea 2 is pretty much just a low-budget remake of the original that never seems to get an original idea.