‘Deep Water’ Trailer: The Director of ‘Deep Blue Sea’ and ‘Die Hard 2’ Is Back to What He Does Best

In the summer of 1990, director Renny Harlin graduated from the world of independent horror (where he had directed “Prison” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4“) to the Hollywood studio big time when Twentieth-Century Fox released two new Harlin features back to back. The Andrew Dice Clay vehicle “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane” didn’t make much of an impression on audiences or critics (though it has aged incredibly well thanks to some witty badinage courtesy of “Heathers” screenwriter Daniel Waters), but “Die Hard 2” catapulted Harlin to the A-list and proved that the Finnish auteur was a master genre stylist worth watching.

“Cliffhanger,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” and other meticulously crafted action films followed, but for those of us who love shark movies Harlin’s 1999 opus “Deep Blue Sea” remains his masterpiece. Featuring one of the greatest, most unexpected death scenes in movie history as well as one of the goofiest end credit songs ever (LL Cool J’s “Deepest Bluest”), the very scary and very funny “Deep Blue Sea” is second only to Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” on any list of the greatest shark films of all time.

Now, Harlin has a new movie heading for cinemas that combines the airline disaster genre he tweaked in “Die Hard 2” with the kind of shark material that characterized “Deep Blue Sea.” “Deep Water” stars Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley as pilots whose flight goes down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; the handful of survivors then have to reckon not only with a plane in pieces and in danger of sinking, but a multitude of man-eating sharks.

Harlin gives the audience two movies for the price of one: the first half of “Deep Water” is a kinetic disaster flick containing a truly harrowing plane crash, while the second is a body count horror movie in which the survivors struggle to avoid becoming shark food. Both parts display Harlin’s usual skill for escalating tension, his penchant for mixing gory terror with dark humor, and a visual precision that keeps the audience carefully acclimated to the spaces in which the various action sequences are set.

“Deep Water” arrives in theaters on May 1 from Magenta Light Studios. Watch the new trailer below.