Sexy, without boundaries or logic Cinemax
I like shark movies, even if they’re pretty predictable. In fact, in most cases I can predict what’s going to happen in a movie just by the name. That’s why when I saw “Into the Deep,” without much prior knowledge other than the name of the movie and its poster, I knew precisely what to expect: another shark movie about three sexy young men who get lost in the middle of the sea, unbeknownst to anyone, attacked by a shark. That seemed to be the case until I discovered no sharks in this movie, at least not in the sense we know them. It was a battle of wits and instincts between three characters, which was messy and unclear, with some bright spots.
So what are the problems that “Into the Deep” suffers from, how does it relate to contemporary issues surrounding gender relations, and was it worth putting a little shark in here? You can take a deep breath, swim in the review of “Into the Deep” and decide for yourself.
What is the movie In The Deep about?
“Into The Deep” received minimal commercial screening worldwide, but with around $130,000 gross, you can figure it out was intended for home viewing.
He was directed by Kate Cox, her first feature film after several short films. The relatively small cast of the film “Into the Deep” – again, mainly three characters – including Ella Ray Smith (“The Commuter” alongside Liam Neeson, and also a very likeable horror film called “Seance” with Suki Waterhouse), Matthew Daddario (brother of site darling Alexandra Daddario) and Jessica Alexander (supporting role in 2023’s “The Little Mermaid”).
The plot here is quite simple, if not too simple. Jess (Ray Smith) is a young girl who can’t find herself. She lives in a town near the coast, works in a store and is not recovering from her terrible death by drowning. One day, Jess meets a charming young man named Ben (Daddario) and invites him to a beach party. When she learns he owns a yacht, her body’s Schoponi detector goes off, along with probably a few other hormones. Jedd arrives at his yacht at night, drinks whatever it is, but falls asleep. When Jess gets up, she discovers that the guy decided to sail the yacht without asking her, and the lights don’t come on for her.
After the two make out on the yacht in a pretty steamy sex scene (although the weird guy seems to have forgotten to take his pants off first. I think you should), something hits the ship. At that very moment, I happily got up from the couch and shouted, “I finally got my shark!” AAAEEEEESSS“, took a shark doll out of the girls’ closet and started the “Baby Shark” dance with it, which I know from my daughters. If there was a shark in my bathtub, I could have had sex with it.
But like every goal in a football match disallowed by VAR in recent years, after a few seconds I went back to sit on the sofa next to the shark doll, feeling embarrassed. There are no sharks here. It turns out the visitor is a girl (Alexandre) who arrives on a jet ski passed out and doesn’t remember much of what happened. She recovers in time and later joins in a rather wild celebration of dancing, drugs and kissing. After all, it’s about three handsome young people on a yacht.
Without spoiling too much, something will happen later, and someone will claim something happened now or in the past. Events can be related to gender relations and issues that concern the Me Too movement. We have to decide with the main character what is happening here: is the man guilty of what the “new” girl claims to have done to him? Is this girl just a psychopath who makes things up from her heart? And where exactly does the main character, Jess, stand on these issues?
Here’s the trailer for “Into the Deep” which, like most films today, reveals way too much about the film.
In the depths, literally
The main problem with “Into the Deep” is that the film hasn’t yet fully decided what it wants to be: and no, don’t let the description here make you think that this is a film reminiscent of Polanski’s masterpiece “Knife in the Water,” which also dealt with the power struggles, including sexual ones, of Three People on a Yacht. There are too many problems here for it to be very tempting to say that their level or application is “Into the Deep”, but that’s too predictable, which is why I won’t do it.
And yet, its pacing is uneven: the beginning is long and tedious until I think I’ve made a mistake in the film (or at least, you should try to find out more about a film before watching it). There are many references to Jess’s past and her mother’s fate, which must either fit into the plot or contribute a lot to character development. Even if the second half of the film is more interesting, it is difficult to argue that the mystery it sets up fascinates the viewer too much: it arrives a little too late. It progresses too quickly and some twists and turns need better explanations.
The acting here is reasonable, sometimes more, sometimes less, and there is some exaggeration. The reason may be linked to dialogue, which is not always practical. The film doesn’t build tension, both in terms of the specific scene and in terms of the general questions it raises regarding the relationships between the characters, and there are moments where it feels more like a romantic drama. The problem is that it is difficult to understand the behavior of the characters, even in a romantic drama.
Daddario is handsome, but the film doesn’t develop him beyond the character of the “charmer” and, later, the “scary charmer.” What makes her heroine ignore the warning signs in a man she met a few hours earlier might be more obvious. Like most films set on a ship, especially in the horror or survival thriller genre, the characters sometimes forget their brains at sea and perform actions that are not rational.that’s the least we can say.
Never say no, me too version
Without going into too many spoilers, the film addresses several hot topics in recent years. It presents the complex system between men and women, with the right touches (in this case, touches of a different kind). The point of view here is almost entirely female, even though a man wrote the screenplay (David Betton).
The film directly or indirectly raises questions related to borders and their precise intersections: it is illegitimate for a man to take a woman on a cruise to the middle of the sea while she sleeps (“You should have asked,” she says), but a simple apology (“You’re right”) and a few kisses can make him forget.
Later, issues that we know about in the news pages will come back, like consensual or non-consensual sex, drugging women and filming them in secret. It is the same, and the viewer will have to – perhaps like a judge in a court of law – decide whether there is a case here, or whether it is a false complaint of sexual harassment, or simply a case of misunderstanding. That is, the film certainly comes at a time that warrants the issues it raises, which may concern many men or women to some extent, but the engagement with them is sometimes sloppy. A little tightening up in the storyline would have made the result more impressive. Perhaps it would have added more depth to the film, as you might expect from the name.
Into The Deep Review: What’s the Bottom Line?
So why is it still possible to see “Into the Deep,” a film that is far from perfect and suffers from numerous problems? First of all, it’s a film with some decent scenes, mainly those related to the psychological side of one of the characters, and it’s hard to say that I suffered too much during this film (hey, it’s also less than an hour and a half!).
Even though most of the movie failed to put me back on the edge of the couch, it did create a sense of claustrophobia for episodes that I’ve come to expect from this type of movie. In this context, it is worth recognizing the director’s successful use of a minimal location and cast. I found a certain interest in the mystery that he sets up in his second part, in particular thanks to the character of Lexi, vulnerable, tough and a little psychotic.
Plus, the cast is pretty sexy; much of the film revolves around a handsome actor in a swimsuit, and there is some nudity that has all but disappeared from horror cinema in recent years. So, even if it was possible to add a little shark or something to spice things up, there were films that I suffered more from. Today, that may be enough.
