'Deep Water' (2026) | Plane-Crash Shark Movie is Watchable Schlock

For when there's no-fin better to do while doing laundry

The most unbelievable part of the Gene Simmons-produced, quasi Chinese propaganda plane crash into a shark dinner movie Deep Water is that it is not the worst thing ever made. Every part of the production is a red flag. Aaron Eckhart stars. He is a solid actor who has almost exclusively starred in turkeys since his role in The Dark Knight. Does anyone remember Battle Los Angeles (2011) or I, Frankenstein (2014)? The script was written by six people. Six. Renny Harlin directs his follow-up to the much-maligned The Strangers trilogy of films, which holds a collective Rotten Tomatoes score of 53%. Luckily, those involved know that with a premise this juicy, it is best to let it be exactly what it says on the (shark meat) tin.

Eckhart plays Ben, a first officer pilot for the fictional Northeastern Airlines. The captain of the plane is the soon-to-retire Rich (Ben Kingsley) and Ben is a bit sad that he is not yet a captain himself. The plane’s passengers include the young Cora (Molly Belle Wright) who is struggling to adjust to her stepmom and stepbrother, a Chinese e-sports team, an American wrestling team, and the last person you’d want to sit next to on a 747 Dan (Angus Sampson) among others.

A series of very unfortunate events leads the plane to crash in epic fashion right into a coral reef infested with sharks. The crash sequence is by far the highlight of the film as it keeps escalating. When the action is primarily utilizing practical sets and effects, the film succeeds. In the moments where green screen or CG is used, it is obvious and looks cheap. Besides some shots of the plane and the ocean backgrounds, Harlin is smart about limiting the duration of digital effects to when they are needed.

The surviving passengers are then scattered around in different fragments of the plane. It is up to Ben to figure out how to get them all together and rescued. A variety of characters get their own subplots and dramas and most end up food for the sharks. In fact, one of the stronger parts of the script is how hard it is to predict who will live and die. There are certainly obvious characters with plot armor, but there were a few actual surprises on both sides of life and death.

While there is a lot of carnage here, the film saves space for genuine humanity. Do not expect Oscar-level emotion. Some of this melodrama comes off as cheesy, but one scene with a grandmother praying to God was unexpectedly effective. While the selling point of a film like this is seeing redshirts getting murked by ravenously hungry ocean predators, it is appreciated that it never sinks to gratuitous cruelty.

One clear element which should be acknowledged is that this was made for Chinese audiences first despite having a predominantly Western cast. Americans are usually portrayed as being entitled and selfish while the Chinese characters are all models of heroism. Dan yells out at one point “Help me! I am an American!” and the hotheaded American wrestling team antagonizes the patient and kind Chinese e-sports players. Given the expected box office grosses for Deep Water stateside, targeting the Chinese was not a bad idea. I can see audiences here understandably being turned off by it. I was not personally offended by it and it is not thematically communist or anything, but it is clearly on the other side of the cold war.

In the grand scheme of B-movies, Deep Water is middle of the road. It is not quite as stupidly fun as the other China-aimed shark movie Meg 2: The Trench where Jason Statham fights a giant shark with a spear while riding a jet ski. It is also never boring and the plane crash in particular is a genuinely spectacular set piece. Do you need to rush out immediately and see this in theaters? No.