What's scarier: a shark on cocaine, or a really bad film? Well "neither", according to the fearless Netflix UK subscribers who have managed to put 2023 movie Deep Fear onto the streaming service's top 10 ranking of most-watched movies.
Deep Fear is about a yachtswoman who is kidnapped by drug traffickers, who force her to recover some sunken cocaine from the wreckage of their vessel. The plan goes wrong when vicious sharks manage to sink their teeth into the nose candy, introducing Great Whites to the great White Rock.
If this plot seems eerily familiar then yes, it does seem to be simply an aquatic take on Cocaine Bear.
The movie stars House of Gucci and Dom Hemingway actress Mãdãlina Ghenea as Naomi, the shark-pursued sailor, and Gossip Girl star Ed Westwick as her boyfriend Jackson.
After being added to Netflix UK on Monday, January 29, the movie quickly jumped up the rankings of Netflix's most-watched movies list, and at the time of writing two days later it's at the second spot, under The Lost City.
Unfortunately, Netflix fans aren't exactly loving the movie. It currently has a 13% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (with too few critic reviews to even get a critics' score). Some IMDb user reviews call it a "waste of time", a "bomb of unnameable effect" and worthy of ranking in the "top 100 worst movies of all time".
Particular criticism goes to the special effects used on the shark apparently looking fake — one could call them Jaws-droppingly bad — as well as the movie's poor acting and strange pacing.
Still, there must be some reason why people are gnawing their way through Deep Fear. Maybe it's the movie's runtime, which is lovely and short at sub 90 minutes. Or maybe it's the Caribbean-set sunny locale (actually filmed in Malta), which is a nice breath of fresh warm air in a storm-battered and cold Britain.
However, if you'd rather watch a more enjoyable movie about a wild animal taking cocaine and turning into a blood-lusting murder machine, Cocaine Bear is available to watch on Sky TV and Now Cinema.
