You gotta keep things fresh right? The easiest way to do that for movies, is to just combine two movies into one and see what happens. That way, you only have to do 2 half movies and stitch them together. 2026’s Deep Water had me at it’s pitch immediately; why no big studio thought of this before I’m shocked. I only hoped Renny Harlin’s film wouldn’t fruitcake the situation, as Jim Gaffigan masterfully put it.
First officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) is actively running away, broken hearted at what’s come of his now ex military life and his son, dealing with cancer. He jumps on pilot Rich’s (Ben Kingsley) flight from LA to Shanghai, where the laid back Rich tries to get Ben to take a chill pill about the wing flaps as they take off. Turns out that, and one of the 20 worst humans on the planet (Angus Sampson) and his shorting out charger cause a fire below deck, forcing the flight into the Pacific Ocean. That’s when most movies rescues would happen, but not Deep Water, which reminds us there may or may not be an apex predator below the water very excited for the panicky, bloody fresh meat now right above them.
Renny Harlin’s been making movies like these since the 1993’s Cliffhanger. Not all of them are good, but Deep Water’s material isn’t super great either, so Harlin’s stable, B movie hands are a plus for the most part. He basically makes 2 1 hour films and crams them together. The plane crash hour I liked a bit more. The character archetypes are hilariously stupid and over the top, like the British guy in Snakes on a Plane who loathes Americans to the point where I think he was gotta hit children. The crash itself builds nicely: we get a hellacious fire below deck that’s the right mixture of crazy and silly; watching two assistant pilots try to contain it will only elicit laughter. That of course leads to a hole in the cabin, where the chaos slowly starts breaking the plane apart. Harlin does the CGI technical part, but then smartly drifts the camera to passenger level, which captures the terror and noise chaos of these unsuspecting people, like say, two stepchildren whose parents went to join the mile high club. That crash is as terrifying as we’d hope, giving us a high point as Ben Kingsley’s pilot tries to land in the water and all hell breaks loose.
Taking us to the water. The best part is the beginning of this section. Harlin has the plane split into pieces near a reef, meaning we get giant metal husks filled with some of our archetypes, as well as bodies in the water. Wouldn’t ya know it, the drunk American rugby player (Lakota Johnson) who doesn’t like the Asian esports team leader (Wenhan Li) end up in the same part? Those stepchildren referenced above, you’re gonna be shocked, SHOCKED! to find that they have been separated from their parents, scared and alone. One of those kids is in the coolest setup: a plane section submerged on the reef but with rising water inside it. Easygoing pilot Rich is trapped in the cockpit, meaning our broken first officer Ben is gonna have to step up! All the characters we don’t care about end up mostly in the water, allowing Harlin to creep the dread in as the bodies disappear, and our esports girl crush (Rosie Chao) screaming in pain with a bloody leg. This section feels like Harlin either got bored or ran out of money on too many CGI shark shots. There’s lots of weird editing that makes it unclear who lives and dies until the very end, as well as a lot of bad CGI that’s tough to watch after the scary crash. The only saving grace is a couple crazy shark sequences that walk the silly insane line that disaster movies like Deep Water live between to great success, usually involving a third thing like a flare gun, or a helicopter.
On the whole, Deep Water is big dumb fun. Like Thrash earlier this year we’re pulling a double duty: disaster and shark combo that we should do more of, culminating obviously in Shark Sandstorm the movie. My biggest regret of 2026’s Deep Water is we didn’t have the characters from 2016’s film with the same title in it. Can you imagine captain quaalude Ben Affleck in the Eckhart role. Or an unhinged Ana De Armas eating the sharks to fight them off. Or a shirtless Jacob Elordi smoldering in the sun? Only my fantasy? Yeah, my bad y’all.