BLU-RAY REVIEW:
Street Date 8/25/20;
Warner;
Thriller;
$19.98 DVD, $24.98 Blu-ray;
Rated ‘R’ for some violence, bloody images, and language.
Stars Tania Raymonde, Nathaniel Buzolic, Emerson Brooks, Bren Foster, Alex Bhat, Reina Aoi.
The third “Deep Blue Sea” movie is definitely a step up from its lackluster predecessor.
With the 1999 original achieving a certain cult status, the direct-to-video Deep Blue Sea 2 landed in 2018 as mostly a retread of the first one’s story.
The first film dealt with a team of scientists at a research station in the middle of the ocean experimenting with genetically engineered mako sharks in search of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. The sharks become super-intelligent and attack the base, killing almost everyone who is attempting to escape.
The second one, set on a much cheaper looking ocean platform, deals with bull sharks genetically engineered by a crazy billionaire looking to develop a drug to enhance human intelligence. The sequel makes no mention of events from the first film, but predictably the sharks get smarter and attack the base, eating most of the people on it.
In the third film, some of the bulls that escaped the second movie are being tracked by a team of hunters to an island fishing village off the coast of Africa. The man-made island is sinking, leaving it mostly abandoned except for a group of scientists studying the sea life that has sprung up around the island, including a nursery for great white sharks. As the bulls target the underwater nursery, one of the hunters is old friends with the head scientist (Tania Raymonde), so they team up to try to capture the bulls.
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The production values are a vast improvement over the limited sets of the second film, though the direct-to-video budget is still evident. And the film actually makes an effort to connect the story back to the original film, establishing that the research done in the first film was acquired by the company in the second, who repurposed it.
All in all, its an enjoyable escapade for fans of shark attack movies.
The Blu-ray includes a couple of five-minute featurettes: “Sinking Sets and Sharks: Making Deep Blue Sea 3,” mostly about the production design and visual effects, and “Deep Blue Sea 3: Fight to the Death” about the action scenes.