Deep Blue Sea 3 (2020)
(On Cable TV, March 2021) As much as I have some fondness for the original Deep Blue Sea, I really wasn’t impressed by its long-delayed sequel. Fortunately, Deep Blue Sea 3 finds a bit of a middle ground: it’s not a good film, but it avoids most of the pitfalls of terrible low-budget sequels. “Low budget,” these days, does give you a bit more than it used to — thanks to CGI and international tax breaks, filmmakers can now create impressive settings (such as this instalment’s small flooded island), feature aggressive creatures and shoot digitally in a way that lowers production costs for better image quality. In other words, Deep Blue Sea 3 often gives the impression of being a more ambitious film. (The underwater sequences, notably, look expensive.) The plot links with the second film are there but not essential — all you need to know is that there are smart sharks out there, and they consider our characters as snacks. There’s some thematic content about climate change and corporate money corrupting science, but soon enough we’re back in shark-chomping mode, enlivened by the small flooded town setting in which the action takes place. Having better-developed characters than usual for those movies helps a bit: Tania Raymonde makes for an attractive heroine, but the ensemble cast nearly all gets a good scene or two — to the point where we’re actually sorry to see most of them go, unlike some monster movies where you just wish for all of them to die. Deep Blue Sea 3 is not a great movie, but it’s watchable, even entertaining — which, compared to other works in the genre, is not a bad result at all.
