“All you see is trails of blood, even God won’t intervene,

Nightmares of darkness, my appetite is heartless,

Even if we related, you eliminated regardless,

In the deep blue, underwater walls,

Half man, half shark, My jaws don’t fall”

-LL Cool J “Deepest Bluest (Shark’s Fin)”

Is bacon still a thing? Like, I know that it still exists, but is still a big meme? Do people wear shirts that say, “I love Bacon!”, or “Body by Bacon”, or “I want to make love to a big pile of Bacon”, and stuff like that? There was awhile there where people wouldn’t shut up about bacon. The bacon phenomenon of a few years ago was too much for me, and caused me to have a deep internal struggle with my feelings as they pertained to bacon. I wanted to rebel against the bacon fad and hate bacon with every fiber of my being. I was a man at war with myself during this time, because here’s the thing: I like bacon. I probably rank it behind sausage in terms of breakfast meats, but I prefer it to ham. Here is my official top 5 breakfast meat ranking, for the record:

1. Sausage links
2. Sausage patties
3. Chorizo Sausage
4. Bacon
5. Ham

I don’t really count steak as a breakfast meat, but if I did, it would probably be above bacon. Maybe Chorizo as well. Really, the only breakfast meat that I don’t like that much is ham.

Sharks are kind of like bacon. People love sharks. Every time there’s a shark week people celebrate it like it’s Mardi Gras. I’m curious how many people actually watch the documentaries about sharks, because I don’t run into a lot of shark experts, just a bunch of people who think sharks are cool. Recently, there seems to have been a surge in shark movies as well. THE SHALLOWS, 47 METERS DOWN, and MEG are just a few of the bigger budget ones that have been– or will be– released. That’s not even counting all the Syfy and DTV/VOD ones that I have missed.

Here’s the other thing: I like sharks, and movies that feature sharks. Sure, much like bacon, they are overexposed, but I still enjoy them. Sharks are cool, especially in movies where they are presented as a force that is constantly moving forward with no regard for anything except food. They are a great horror villain when used correctly, and even when they aren’t, they are still pretty neat. I haven’t reached the boiling point with shark movies like I did with bacon a few years ago, but I’m beginning to worry.

DEEP BLUE SEA is one of those movies that I look back on fonder than I probably should. I haven’t seen it recently, but what sticks with me is the film’s goofier charms: the giant shark, Sam Jackson screaming and then being devoured mid-sentence, the LL Cool J song, LL Cool J’s bird, LL Cool J’s chef’s outfit etc. I don’t really know how it holds up, and I don’t really care. The joys of most shark movies outside of JAWS are fleeting, and DEEP BLUE SEA, and DEEP BLUE SEA 2 are no exception. Unfortunately, the fleeting joys of DEEP BLUE SEA 2 are less frequent than its predecessor.

Yeah, I know,  what did I really expect from a DTV sequel to a movie released almost 20 years ago? I probably got what I expected, but I did have a bit of hope when I saw that the movie was directed by Darin Scott. Scott co-wrote TALES FROM THE HOOD, a movie that seems to be in the midst of a rightful reassessment as a classic. Scott’s involvement gave me a glimmer of optimism that I might get something at least a little bit interesting with DEEP BLUE SEA 2– and it does have its moments –but what I mainly got was a sometimes-entertaining, yet mostly uneventful, reworking of the first film.

Dr. Durant is the billionaire head of a pharmaceutical company who is using sharks as test subjects for his own nefarious purposes (more on this later). To vet the sharks, Durant has enlisted a team of biologists and experts to study them. If you’ve seen the first movie, or probably any shark movie featuring genetically enhanced sharks, or really any horror movie ever, you can probably guess where this is going.

Did you guess yet? Is your guess that the sharks rise-up and attempt to kill the people that are there to study and/or exploit them? If it is, then you are correct. If you didn’t guess that, I would really like to know what you did guess, so please comment below.

I did say that DEEP BLUE SEA 2 has its moments, so I will focus on those. For example: there is a part in the movie where a shark leaps out of the water and decapitates a guy, and then the guys bloody stump spurts blood into the water. It’s really great.

I also liked the piranha-like baby sharks in the movie. I don’t think I have ever seen those in a shark movie before, and if I have seen them, I’ve completely forgotten it, so they were new to me. There are moments in DEEP BLUE SEA 2 that mix a piranha movie with a shark movie, and those are the moments that feel fresh and inventive. Well, inventive is probably too strong a word. They feel not-boring, and that’s a nice feeling during this movie, because it doesn’t happen often.

Another not-boring part of DEEP BLUE SEA 2 is the devious plot of the villain, Dr. Calhoun, played by Michael Beach with a hammy-ness befitting a nice, meaty breakfast. Dr. Calhoun’s plan revolves around using the sharks as test subjects so that he can jump start the next stage in human evolution and prepare humans for the looming war against artificial intelligence. It’s an insane motivation, and one that belongs in a different movie than most of DEEP BLUE SEA 2.

This is one of those DTV/SYFY movies that doesn’t go for irony like a SHARKNADO or a SHARKS VS PYTHONS, or whatever, and instead plays it mostly straight-faced– an approach I prefer– but one that can sometimes lead to a dull film, which is the case with DEEP BLUE SEA 2. Because it plays things so straight-faced, things like the shark-experiments-to-stop-the robot-uprising plot are never as fun as they seem, and are laid out in seemingly endless scenes of exposition.

DEEP BLUE SEA 2 is cheap-looking, and overly talky for much of its runtime. It also features a too serious tone that conflicts with the goofier aspects of the film’s plot. DEEP BLUE SEA 2 never figures out what type of movie it wants to be, and feels like a movie at war with itself. Kind of like me when I didn’t want to like bacon. Which is too bad, because bacon really is pretty good.