Director Renny Harlin Admits He Ripped off ALIEN for That Wild DEEP BLUE SEA Death Scene
There’s a moment in the film Deep Blue Sea that is known for making audiences jump out of their seats. If you’ve seen it, you know exactly the one. Now, years later, director Renny Harlin has openly admitted that the scene owes a big debt to Alien.
Back in 1979, Ridley Scott changed sci-fi horror forever with Alien. It played like a haunted house story set in deep space, with a Xenomorph stalking a stranded crew and Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley emerging as the ultimate survivor.
But one of the film’s biggest shocks had nothing to do with chestbursters. It was the sudden death of Tom Skerritt’s Captain Dallas. Audiences assumed he was the hero. Then he crawled into an air duct… and that was that.
Harlin saw that moment and took notes.
Speaking to Empire magazine, Harlin admitted he borrowed that exact storytelling trick when crafting his 1999 cult shark thriller.
“I came up with this. It was completely ripped off from Alien, where Tom Skerritt is the only star in that movie. He’s the captain of the ship, and the audience is completely trusting that he’s going to be the lead of the movie, and he goes into this air duct and there’s the alien and boom, he’s gone. And the audience is like, What just happened?’ And then they realise that you can’t trust anything in this movie.”
That idea of pulling the rug out from under the audience isn’t new. Alfred Hitchcock famously did it with Psycho when Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane was killed off early. Wes Craven followed suit in Scream when Drew Barrymore didn’t make it past the opening scene. Horror has always loved to toy with expectations.
But Harlin brought that same energy into sci-fi territory with Deep Blue Sea, and he did it using Samuel L. Jackson.
After working with Jackson on The Long Kiss Goodnight, Harlin promised he’d cast him again. The original Deep Blue Sea script didn’t have a part that fit, so Harlin created one. What Jackson didn’t know was how it would end.
“I didn’t tell Sam anything,” Harlin explained. “I was just like, ‘Hey, Sam, I have this movie and I think this character would be awesome for you. He read it and wrote back, ‘Oh my God. Best Movie Death Ever.’”
If you’ve seen the film, you know the scene. Jackson’s character gives a rousing speech about survival, building up what feels like the big heroic turning point. Then a genetically enhanced shark explodes out of the water and devours him mid-sentence. It’s fast, brutal, and completely unexpected.
Harlin later watched the movie with a packed crowd and said the audience reaction to Jackson getting eaten by the shark was a tremendous moment, calling it “one of the greatest satisfactions a director can have.”
That’s a big reason why Deep Blue Sea still has fans. The movie follows a team of researchers at an underwater facility experimenting on sharks in hopes of curing Alzheimer’s.
The twist is that the sharks have been genetically modified to increase their brain capacity. Smarter sharks, it turns out, are a terrible idea. They flood the facility, outthink the humans, and turn the lab into an underwater death trap.
The cast was strong across the board. Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, LL Cool J, and Michael Rapaport rounded out the ensemble.
Critics even gave it a decent reception at the time, earning praise for its B-movie thrills. That’s not bad for a movie about super-intelligent sharks hunting scientists in a sinking base.
Harlin’s career has always been a rollercoaster. He directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and the infamous box office disaster Cutthroat Island. He also delivered the wildly underrated thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight. Through all the highs and lows, one thing has stayed consistent. He knows how to put on a show.
By lifting a trick from Alien and applying it to a shark movie, Harlin gave Deep Blue Sea one of the most unforgettable death scenes in sci-fi horror.