Deep Blue Sea is a 1999 horror film featuring a genetically-manipulated 30 foot mako shark with a brain four times the normal size of a mako shark. Expect some thrills.
7 out of 10 stars. This is one of the few horror films that has withstood the test of time.
A team of scientists buy a decommissioned off-shore drilling rig and turn it into an underwater marine research facility called Aquatica. The team is led by Dr. Susan McAllister who is suddenly given an ultimatum by their financial backers–make some progress or shut down. So she invites the millionaire who’s been funding them, Russell Franklin, to the facility for the weekend while the regular crew is off. What Franklin discovers is that Dr. McAllister and her partner Dr. Whitlock have been using genetic manipulation to make the test shark’s brains bigger so they could extract more fluid from their brains. And those sharks are not happy.
That evening after Dr. McAllister has extracted the cerebral fluid from the largest test shark and has run the experiment that proves it works, the shark wakes up prematurely and bites off Dr. Whitlock’s arm. When the animal keeper, Carter Blake, goes to shoot the shark, Dr. McAllister releases it from the docking mechanism and it swims free. Did I mention there also happens to be a hurricane?
They get Dr. Whitlock on a gurney up to the surface only to discover the hurricane is making it almost impossible for the rescue helicopter to raise the gurney into the helicopter. The wench gives way and Dr. Whitlock and his gurney drop into the water with the cable still attached. That’s when the largest mako takes Whitlock in her jaws and crashes through the glass window in the lab. This does two things: (1) crashes the helicopter above which creates an explosion that takes out most of the facility above water and (2) fills the underwater portion of the facility with seawater so it starts to sink.
The rest of the film is the remaining six survivors trying to get up to the surface without getting eaten by sharks who are patrolling the corridors.
Free on Netflix.
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