Movie Review: Deep Water (2026)

Deep Water (2026) directed by Renny Harlin

Ben (Aaron Eckhart) is a co-pilot on a flight from Los Angeles to China. He's been taking long flights to avoid going back home where his young son is battling cancer. The main pilot (Ben Kingsley) left his family behind a long time ago. Now he hits the karaoke bars in between flights to fill the emptiness of his life. Their flight to China is shanghaied by some broken electronics in the luggage that catch fire. The fire spreads and causes the plane to go down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and in the middle of shark-infested waters. A lot of the passengers are introduced to viewers, giving plenty of side plots to follow as everyone is jeopardized by a situation that's part Poseidon Adventure and part Jaws. 

This flick is a solid B-movie. The story has some decent scenes and ideas in it. Eckhart and Kingsley give solid performances. On the other hand, a lot of the minor characters have cliched story-arcs that play out as you would imagine (will the Chinese captain of the e-sports team finally admit his true feelings for his cute teammate?) and there are many very implausible moments. The sharks are very random, sometimes ignoring certain characters or only mildly injuring them or majorly-but-not-fatally injuring them or leaping out of the water spectacularly. I don't mind that I saw this but I probably wouldn't watch it again.

Barely recommended. You need to be a fan of someone in the cast (that includes the sharks).