Scout Taylor Compton is too good for Into the Deep. The veteran horror actor commits so hard to playing one-note lead Cassidy – who’s still reeling from watching her father get eaten by a shark when she was a kid (really) – that this tonally inconsistent mess of a movie almost works as a result. Almost. But sadly, there’s just too much going on for anything to properly land, from Cassidy’s trauma to the thinly written characters including her husband, his buddy, a random couple, the locals, law enforcement, and a bunch of drug smugglers. Suffice it to say that it’s a lot. Despite Compton’s skilled performance, the movie rapidly sinks.
We’re first introduced to Cassidy as a youngster swimming happily with her father. They’re clearly well off because the family has a yacht, at least for the day, at their disposal. At one point she yells: “stop kicking me!” which begs the question, do sharks have feet? Does it feel like they’re kicking you when they’re striking? He dies gruesomely right in front of her, Cassidy trying to grip Dad’s bloody hand with her own as he disappears, screaming, into the depths below. Fast forward to the present day and Cassidy is newly married to a British simp named Gregg with two Gs (Callum McGowan). As some useless exposition confirms, it’s the anniversary of her father’s death and they’re about to go diving in the same body of water, which is obviously an absurd idea.
Even worse, they’re looking for buried treasure because Gregg apparently works for a London museum, though McGowan’s character is such a non-entity it’s impossible to buy that he exists anywhere but within the bounds of this particular story. Nobody has any interior life, including poor Cassidy, so the idea that Gregg is some committed historian on an Indiana Jones-like crusade is groan-worthy. His longtime pal, inexplicably called Benz (because he drives a Mercedes Benz? Unclear), is played by Irish actor Stuart Townsend with a passable English accent. How kind of Charlize Theron’s ex-husband to take some time out of his busy schedule sharing conspiracy theories on Twitter to play a man who looks like he’s eagerly anticipating a heel turn that never materializes.
Perhaps Townsend originally auditioned for Jordan, the villain played with scenery-chewing malice by Jon Seda, who regrettably resembles a poor man’s Skeet Ulrich in both looks and presence. The Chicago P.D. star seems to be in an entirely different movie to everyone else, but it’s worth noting that he has more chemistry with Compton than McGowan and each time they share a scene, Into the Deep briefly crackles to something resembling life. Unfortunately, Jordan is so demonstrably bad from the outset that there’s nowhere for Seda’s performance to go. He starts at a 10, murdering people at random, so we’re essentially left to wait for Jordan to inevitably be devoured by a shark. There are no stakes when the bad guy is just 100% bad, with no levels or layers to his character. He also has a massive facial scar that’s never explained but presumably came from a shark since Jordan wears a tooth around his neck.
As for the animals themselves, the water is just murky enough to hide them but the mighty creatures are incredibly obvious when they’re around, which robs Into the Deep of any sense of intrigue or impending doom. They’re not the worst sharks I’ve ever seen in a sharksploitation movie, but the flick consistently returns to a blurry, computer-generated shot of one biting someone’s legs, which instantly feels repetitive. They also move a bit too slowly (side note: the human villains do too). Likewise, Gregg swims out into the sea for quite a while at two separate points and never once seems in danger of being bitten. It’s almost as though the movie only uses sharks when it’s convenient to the plot, like set dressing, rather than properly integrating them into the story. Are they a consistent threat or not?
There’s also a goofy moment involving Cassidy, quite literally, facing her fears that makes one shark look downright cuddly and cute. Still, for all its faults, Into the Deep is impressively pro-Great White, with Richard Dreyfuss’ character, a marine biologist, making several powerful and very welcome speeches about the importance of conservation and respecting the sea. Given that nowadays sharks are killed for biting humans who knowingly swim into their homes it’s comforting to see a character spelling out the fact that we are guests in the ocean rather than the other way around. The Jaws star also speaks over the closing credits, which although clearly well-intentioned, doesn’t really fit with a movie as inconsequential as this one. Likewise, Dreyfuss’ recent sexist and homophobic remarks don’t sit well with his appearance here as Cassidy’s twinkly-eyed grandfather who’s constantly encouraging her to be a stronger woman.
The bigger problem, though, is that nobody besides the protagonist is given anything close to the requisite character development for us to care when they get eaten – least of all the only other woman onscreen, who wears a bikini the entire time, and whose sole defining trait is that she’s a wife. The setting is spectacular, and similar to the recent, far more successful Influencer, but there’s a sense that the cost of shooting on location made it impossible to create any real delineation between home and abroad. Cassidy and Gregg are presumably on vacation, since they’re staying in a hotel, but her granddad appears to either live in the same place or somewhere that looks remarkably similar. It’s distracting, among a sea of other confusing choices like the 50 different competing story-lines (Gold coins! Smugglers! Sharks!).
With this much thrown at the wall, something was bound to stick and if there’s any reason to watch Into the Deep it’s for Compton’s skilled, emotionally charged performance in the lead role. If only it were in service of a stronger, more tightly-scripted movie, with clearly defined stakes, compelling characters, or convincing sharks.
WICKED RATING: 4/10
Director(s): Christian Sesma
Writer(s): Chad Law, Josh Ridgway
Stars: Scout Taylor Compton, Callum McGowan, Stuart Townsend, Richard Dreyfuss
Release date: January 24, 2025 (select theaters, on digital and On Demand)
Language: English
Run Time: 90 minutes
