“Into the Deep” (2022)
Disappointing thriller without the thrills
Disappointing thriller without the thrills
Written by David Beton (Confession, The Hatton Garden Job, I Am Soldier) and directed by first timer Kate Cox in her cinematic debut, this “Sky Original” film has been rightly described and labelled as a thriller, but the major issue is — there are very few thrills. Into The Deep is perhaps better described as a psychological mystery and whilst the performances on screen are very good and the cinematography of Ian Forbes equally good and complimentary, there simply wasn’t enough intrigue or suspense or indeed thrills to fill out an interesting and mysterious psychological dilemma.
This 87 minute film has a cast list of just seven (possibly eight) characters and in order to keep any possible spoilers to a minimum I’ll focus on just the two principal characters in our oceanic drama. Firstly we have American tourist “Ben” (Matthew Daddario) who when walking around an unnamed English coastal harbour town inadvertently peers into the life of “Jess” (Ella-Rae Smith), a part owner of a harbourside shop desperate for the tourist trade passing through. As admitted by her best friend, they both enjoy “catching tourists” and a friendly conversation with “The Tourist Guy” leads to a fight, a drunken night at a beach party, a rather more intimate time aboard the tourist’s luxury yacht before she awakens the next morning ostensibly adrift in the middle of the ocean. With open flashbacks and nightmares of the past, awakening dishevelled and discombobulated in the middle of a watery nowhere would appear to be Jess’ worst nightmare, but have the nightmares only just begun?
Again only focussing on our two principal players, Matthew Daddario is excellent as the tourist and seemingly carefree world traveller. He quickly shares a bond with Jess (or does he?) but Daddario cleverly keeps any suggestion of duplicity in check with an almost absent minded calm. Across from him, Ella-Rae Smith excels, really excels, as the much younger, far more youthful and very innocently naïve bundle of fun and energy masking the deep grief she hides beneath her beautiful outward smiling demeanour. Jess needs to move on, reconcile with a Father who has moved on, and before any possible damaging separation. But Jess also needs to spread her wings and escape, but has the innocent fly been caught in a deadly trap?
Two further excellent portrayals will go unnamed in addition to Matthew Daddario and Ella-Rae Smith above, but there simply wasn’t enough suspense or intrigue, horrors or thrills to sustain my interest.
“there simply wasn’t enough suspense or intrigue, horrors or thrills to sustain my interest”
You think they’ll put that quote on the posters?!
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 100 blog articles within my archives from which to choose from:
A loving appreciation of Philip Seymour Hoffman
Gentleman. Genius. Master.medium.com
Django Unchained through the eyes of a new Quentin Tarantino fan
The QT odyssey continues!medium.com
“Requiem For A Dream” — Revisited
“I’m gonna be on Television!”medium.com