Harlin's Blue Sea a Lark with Sharks for Director Renny Harlin, It's Good to Go Back in the Water

THE PRETRIEVER FEATURES August 8, 1999 PAGE19 Harlin's Blue Sea a Lark With Sharks For director Renny Harlin, it's good to go back in the water. Four years after his pirate debacle Cutthroat Island drowned at the .box office and sank a studio - Carolco Films-Harlin is again plunder ing a mostly oce anic setting in Deep by.Jamie Peck Blue Sea (*** out of four). The surprising result: a movie with bite, and not just because this loud-and-proud thriller plays very much like Jaws on crank. A set-up that sounds Artisan Entertainment supremely goofy still allows for plenty of Extreme Close-Up: When the going gets monster-flick fun, from the game perfor rough in The Blair Witch Project, terrified mances to the gory special effects to the college filmmaker Heather Donahue grisly body count: turns the camera on herself. Forgive Deep Blue Sea of its wince-inducing exposition, which makes it seem destined for straight-to-video Blair Witch oblivion: Scientists aboard a floating labo ratory in the Caribbean, desperately searching for an Alzheimer's cure, have Phenom Hits genetically enhanced mako sharks for their groovy brain tissue, only the test subjects tum on them after inadvertently Horror Home gaining supersmarts from the experiment. from BLAIR WITCH, page 18 Silly mortals. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature, especially if Mother Nature is 25 waypoint seven. Look up in the trees." Amaz feet long, 8,000 pounds, irritable, fast and ingly, all but two of the scenes were done in hungry. a single take. These fierce fishies escape fo}lowing Ultimately, the filmmakers were left with an early mishap involving a gurney, a he the chore of editing about 20 hours of foot licopter and wet walkways that reduces age into a two-hour movie. the principle cast by nearly a third and The choice of Maryland as the setting for can also stand among the finest sequences their experiment in terror was virtually a Harlin has ever helmed- which is say no-brainer. For one thing, both ing a lot, given that he's also overseen writer-directors were pretty familiar with the some uniquely eye-popping stunts in Die Montgomery County area. Either by coinci Hard 2, Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss dence or subconscious imprint, the intricate Goodnight. The rest of Deep Blue Sea legend they created lent itself well to the look takes the form of a Titanic-Jurassic Park of Maryland's woods in the fall. Most of the hybrid as our rag-tag team of heroes Warner Bros. avoids snack status while escaping from movie was filmed at Seneca Creek State Park, Hangin' Tough: Shark wrangler Thomas Jane tries to avoid becoming an in an area chosen for its geography and varied their slowly submerging facility. between-meal snack in Renny Harlin's Deep Blue Sea. terrain. Plus, it was five minutes from Character players like Michael Sanchez's house. Rapaport, Aida Turturro and Stellan Jane- built, blonde and a Baltimore na But the ringmaster of this crafty crea "And Rio Grande's was real close" Myrick Skarsgard are guaranteed goners as vari tive to boot- makes for one memorable ture feature is Harlin. He knows when to interjects, referring to a favorite Mexican res ous nondescript hands, while the great action figure, especially in scenes where his cater to genre conventions-death-defy taurant in Bethesda. Samuel L. Jackson- the movie's sole stoic but charismatic wrangler faces danger ing dangles, close shaves, situation-appro Surprisingly, the creation oftheBlairmyth recognizable name-caps his stint as the and returns a champ. He's the guy audiences priate kiss-off lines - and when to stray itself was very instinctual, and required little study's bigshot bankroller with his typi will most want to see pull through without from cliches, as evidenced by several deep research on the filmmakers' parts. cal dramatic fire. He and Oscar always becoming human sushi, though LL Cool J tricks and treats that'll take many viewers Myrick: "Our production designer Ben seem to be mentioned in the same breath, rates a close second. As a religious cook who by surprise. The pinnacle of these - a Rock was knowledgeable about the occult but not this time. The real stories here are knows his way around a kitchen, this ami sudden, terrifying attack not, for once, and witchcraft, and the Wiccans and all that. the scary computer-generated and robot able rapper-turned-actor does for Deep Blue foreshadowed by a stinging musical score But as far as we as directors were concerned, beasties, thrilling wall-to-wall carnage Sea what he did for Halloween: H20 last sum or a tracking camera shot - is delicious, we thought if we kept things ambiguous and a breakthrough performance from mer-energize an effective creep show with disorienting and altogether unexpected, enough, people would draw their own con indie find Thomas Jane. a funky comic dimension. just like the sum of Deep Blue Sea. clusions. Rocks and [bundles of] sticks in the woods are enough to plant ideas in peoples heads. The Blair mythology plays on people's It's pretty much full of cheeseballs. The website at www.blairwitch. com, which was sword," says Sanchez. "Or a quadruple-edged own fears, and their own incorporated recol agents drive better cars than their clients. But created virtually in tandem with the movie, sword. One edge is serrated, and another is lections of folklore." that's the way it is. They have a lot of power." lacks definitive answers to that ever-burning like a Ginsu knife. Bootlegging is good. Or The confidence that their story was worth And what about their take on hype? Since question. maybe it's bad. No, it's definitely bad." the toil, that it would scare the bejeezus out the Sundance Film Festival, the ftlm has been Of course, the directors contend, "Doing He continues: "I'm sure people will figure of everybody with a pulse, seems to have gathering word-of-mouth like a snowball interviews like this one may defuse the ter that if the movie is being bootlegged, it must worked wonders for Myrick and Sanchez. down a mountain slope. ror of seeing the movie for the first time. But be good and must be worth paying money Artisan Entertainment bought the fllin for $1 "We're always worried about hype," says we've found that people who know it's fake for. It doesn't affect the box-office very much million at this year's Sundance Film Festi Myrick. "We're kind of new at all this. We get the creeps anyway." either." Sanchez smirks, giving his best im val. were all apprehensive at Sundance about [the The obsession with the film has already pression of a Hollywood cheeseball. "Which, After all our talk about fear and scariness fllin] not living up to the hype. And it's the generated a cadre of cult fans. Even before of course, is all we care about." and doom, it was funny how naturally our same now except on a bigger scale. A lot of the fllin's initial release, the nice folks who So what's up next for the writing-directing conversation shifted to the subject Holly what we're doing now is 'hype-control."' live in Burkittsville, the town depicted in the team? How does one follow up a horror hit wood, which itself can be a scary place to be The pair break out into the Batman theme, movie, have had to contend with young visi like The Blair Witch Project? Myrick offers trapped. ending with "Hype control!" tors straying into their town "looking for the the answer as if it's top secret. "It's a com Sanchez: "My mother was worried about For the filmmakers, the greatest side-effect fllinmakers." edy. We've been worklng on it since Blair. me. She knew that Hollywood has a tendency of all the Blair talk seems to be that some illicit distribution of the film on the Internet It's sort of Monty Python meets Airplane, to eat people alive. It's unbelievable how ac people can't decide whether the footage in has beenalessdesirableside-effectofBlair's meets Kentucky Fried Movie." curate our perceptions of Hollywood were. the movie is "real" or not. Even the official . popularity. "[Bootlegging] is a double-edged He adds, "We're all Blaired out right now." ~r1t~rs ~ar~ted c::c.l~ (~'I OJ 4-S -1 260 .

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