What’s scarier than a shark? A smart shark, one whose brain has been tampered with by some crazy lady who thinks she can cure Alzheimer’s (Saffron Burrows) — so smart that it can swim backwards! Deep Blue Sea is a Big Dumb Movie that still manages to be one of the most entertaining creature features of the ’90s and, if nothing else, has the honor of being one of the better efforts of director Renny Harlin, the man who brought us Cutthroat Island. Samuel L. Jackson plays a “rich suit” (as he’s described by shark handler Thomas Jane) who’s funding the well-intentioned but ultimately ill-advised research that’s taking place at an isolated ocean facility; a simple show-and-tell turns nightmarish when one of the lab animals bites off Stellan Skarsgard‘s arm and a powerful storm leaves everyone stranded with the “gliding monsters” (as they’re somewhat romantically referred to by Burrows before the shit hits the fan). Fed Ex your brain to Siberia and Deep Blue Sea is a total blast as it gets more and more outrageous as it goes long; anyway, what’s really not to like about a flick that has LL Cool J as a God-fearing cook who spends most of his screen time arguing with his pet parrot named, simply, “Bird?” And yeah, for the record, this has at least one amazing, completely out-of-nowhere death scene that set a new bar for the term “audience-pleasing.”
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New On Netflix: Deep Blue Sea