deep down [Netflix]

Director: Kate Cox | Script: David Concrete | Cast: Ella-Rae Smith (Jess), Matthew Daddario (Ben), Jessica Alexander (Lexie), ea | Time to play: 87 minutes | Year: 2022

An isolated place. A small group of people. The main character doesn’t know who to trust. A great basis for a thriller. In this sense, British ticks In the deep enough boxes, and raises the necessary expectations. The fact that both screenwriter David Beton and first-time director Kate Cox can’t put any strain on it is a deadly sin.

The first twist in the Breton story that increases the heart rate by even a fraction only occurs after about fifty minutes. Before this, a story unfolds about a British teenager, Jess, who stares a little too hard into the brown eyes of an American hunk. As a result, she loses all reason and sense of logic.

Jess lost her mother years ago when they flew off the road together and ended up in the water with their car. However, her Jess is not afraid of water, so why this is relevant to the further course remains a mystery. She lives on the British coast of Cornwall and one summer’s day she meets the handsome American Ben. During the beach party afterward, Ben invites Jess out on his sailing yacht. The two have a passionate night, but the next morning Jess wakes up on the yacht that is now in the open sea.

Breton hasn’t tried very hard to instill any sense of danger in his protagonist. Jess initially and logically still gets stressed, because she’s in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger. However, Ben needs some nice words to reassure her. Stupidity is dripping with how hard Jess’s alarm bells are to get going.

The arrival of a third person on board the yacht could bring a new dynamic. Unfortunately, this type just creates the wrong kind of confusion and further disappointment. Once they get to those fifty minutes, Breton and Cox seem to realize they were doing entertainment. that is also the only thing In the deep attempts to offer, there is little development or depth of character.

If after a long delay all the plot elements are in place, the creators don’t know how to get much out of it. They don’t seem to want to fall into the trap of opening all the floodgates and throwing all the moorings overboard. Instead we keep puffing without much push, where it just doesn’t want to explode and the adrenaline level turns out to be as calm as the sea the threesomes are in.

The characters are not pronounced at all. They are never clearly defined. Often chewing on the true circumstances and motives of characters is a sign of weakness, but In the deep, could have used something concrete. Cox and his screenwriter seem to want to appeal to the intelligence of their audience, but it’s hard to dismiss it as more than a failed attempt at drool. If you want to live more emotions at sea with crazy figures on a boat, it’s Australian dead calm from 1989 an absolute necessity.

In the deep can be seen in Netflix.