Parents' Guide to Deep Water

Renny Harlin's disaster-movie-meets-shark-movie feels as if it time-traveled from the 1990s; everything is numbingly familiar, and worse, it takes itself far too seriously. Deep Water smacks of the kind of movie that was prevalent back then—i.e. rip-offs of Die Hard. (As the director of Die Hard 2, even Harlin was in on this trend.) Sampson's Dan, the troublemaker who would gladly sacrifice anyone around him to save his own life, feels like a copy of Die Hard's own cocaine-sniffing Harry Ellis.

In fact, all the passengers are cut from familiar templates, down to the drunken frat boy type who bumps into a young woman and starts aggressively flirting ("Ooh! Feisty! I like it!"). Grandma Becky is jokingly referred to by Matt as "Shelley Winters" (of The Poseidon Adventure), even though it's highly unlikely that a 20-something gamer would know who that was. A character whose leg is stuck in the wreckage is given a tearful goodbye as the hull slowly cracks around them. And the main character naturally has a checkered past (he once punched a superior officer and was ejected from the Air Force!), plus a young son with cancer whom he's trying to get home to. The shark attacks are ridiculous and the sharks are made of cheap-looking CGI. The entire thing feels rehashed and reworked and worn out. Even the title, Deep Water, has been used before. This movie is so empty it really lacks any kind of bite.