Director Renny Harlin returns to shark-infested waters in the shlocky but serviceable "Deep Water," having already plunged those depths with 1999's summertime adventure "Deep Blue Sea."

The veteran Finnish filmmaker has a long and winding Hollywood career that includes a "Nightmare on Elm Street" film (he did part four, "The Dream Master"), a "Die Hard" entry (the rollicking "Die Hard 2"), a pair of Sly Stallone vehicles ("Cliffhanger," which gets a follow-up this summer, and "Driven") and two Geena Davis movies, "Cutthroat Island" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight," the previous of which happened to bankrupt a studio.

He's coming off a trio of "Strangers" movies, which no one saw (and even fewer people liked), so "Deep Water" very much feels like Harlin dipping his toes back into familiar, friendly waters. And he traverses them well, staging a frightening plane crash which plunges its survivors into the middle of the ocean, where hungry sharks circle and long to make them lunch. It's two disaster movies for the price of one!

Harlin fills his flight, which takes off from LA and is bound for Shanghai, with a bunch of stiffly written stock characters who are treated like pawns in a "Final Destination" movie.

There's the seasoned pilot (Ben Kingsley) and the errant first officer (Aaron Eckhart) who just wants to get home to see his sick kid. There's the spunky little girl (Molly Belle Wright), who is processing his father's new girlfriend and her new little brother, who are also on the flight. There's a sassy grandmother (Kate Fitzpatrick), two warring athletes (Li Wenhan and Lakota Johnson) and an obnoxious jerk (Angus Sampson) who you're praying becomes shark food.

Harlin, working from a script with six writing credits, stages his action crisply and cleanly, especially the plane crash sequence, which starts with a small fire in a suitcase in cargo and ends in terror, with passengers being whooshed out into the open air, projectiles flying throughout the cabin and both engines going down in flames. (Don't expect "Deep Water" to make any in-flight film rosters anytime soon.)

By the time the plane crash lands in the water — survivors are scattered between two severed pieces of the plane, both of which are floating in the wide open sea — it's not long before the sharks arrive to stir things up even more. And the human drama element between the passengers provides just enough context to carry this light and predictable but garish and bloody popcorn adventure.

Director Harlin, 67, stages the action with flair and just enough gusto to get "Deep Water" over the finish line. He's not all the way back, but he's back where he belongs, and that's enough for this wild ride.

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'DEEP WATER'

Grade: B-

MPA rating: R (for violent content/bloody images and some language)

Running time: 1:46

How to watch: In theaters May 1

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