Movie Review: "Deep"

Movie Title: "Deep"

Release Date: July 2021

Country: Thailand

This is a Thai sci-fi thriller movie released on Netflix just about several days ago. As a lover of sci-fi genre I jump at the chance to watch this movie after reading the positive reviews written by other people about this movie. However this movie is not as great as how the reviews depict them to be....

This movie features Jane, a medical student top scorer who is shown to have symptoms of OCD like constantly checking the locks at night multiple times although she has locked them for sure and has excessive worries about the house safety. At the same time, she is working hard to balance her life between studying rigorously for her exams, cooking and selling breakfast meals to help pay the mortgage and taking care of her grandmother and insouciant younger sister. The anxiety, the relentless studying schedule and the heavy responsibility on her shoulders have cost her proper sleeps at night, turning her into an insomniac. Jane appears to be the sole breadwinner of the family, implying that she doesn't have parents or any other older family members save for her ailing grandmother.

One day she receives a notice about the mounting debt as she is falling behind on the mortgage payment. Just at the right moment, she also hears from her lecturer that "Weimar", a German pharmaceutical company is recruiting sleep-deprived volunteers for a drug research and is willing to pay a handsome amount of cash for those who agree to participate. Recognizing the opportunity to earn extra income, she signs up for the test and partake in the experiment, but not before agreeing to the terms and conditions of the non disclosure agreement. 

Dr Hans Miller, the research director explains about the experiment dubbed "Deep" (the title of this movie) which consists of three stages. In each stages, a microchip would be inserted into the participants' brain with the aim of harvesting a body hormone (fictional chemical) named qratonin which is responsible for wakefulness as much as melatonin is for sleepiness. The volunteers would be given a wrist watch that displays the progress of the hormone extraction in real time. The extracted hormones in turn, will be utilized to cure and wake people up from coma. However there is a disturbing caveat; the participants must remain wide awake at all time throughout the qratonin collection process lest they want to risk themselves dying from a cardiac arrest as a result of the microchip malfunction. If they fall asleep, the alarm built into the wristwatches will beep for 60 seconds before their hearts stop beating. 

Desperation for money emboldens Jane to proceed with the experiment and she would later discover several other insomniacs who are also recruited for the qratonin extraction. As they band together to look after one another, the background of each characters alongside their troubling stories would be unveiled.

What I like about this movie is the message it gives at the end of it. It talks about the sense of entitlement that a person feels on account of the presumption that he or she lives more unfortunate life compared to other people although there are also other people who face similarly heavy ordeals albeit in different forms. It's okay to feel sad and shed tears but at the same time it is rude and callous to assume that other people don't have their own difficulties as well. The usual saying is, "just because others have it worse, it doesn't mean that what we are having is not bad". The saying is acceptable, considering how people with desperate need for help tend to hesitate about seeking it because they feel like they would be shunned as "others are having worse". However at the same time, this saying should be balanced with the mindset of "just because we are having the worst trauma, it doesn't mean that other people are not going through something bad". While we acknowledge our own sadness and do not take ourselves lightly because "others have it worse", we must also be empathetic with other people as well while articulating our feelings even if "they have it better". Do not ever think that other people don't go through their own despairing difficulties in life.

There is also a theme of dedication towards one's family. Jane in this movie, is always working hard to look after her grandmother and sister. She is like a loving daughter to her grandmother and a devoted mother to her younger sister. Her daily days are preoccupied with either studying or working to earn money. She takes no nonsense and have no time for silly romance, as she explicitly says that she has people she needs to take care of and a responsibility she needs to shoulder.

Exploring Jane's life would also give us a hint about how poor and materially disadvantaged people would desperately do to gain money. They are at a higher risk of being exploited by organizations conducting dangerous works. In this real world too, we have many poor people who are willing to do something as perilous as giving up their organs and becoming surrogate mothers pregnant with the child who are not theirs, putting their own lives at risk for some cash money. The desperate actions they commit are definitely different, but the magnitude of the grave danger they go through is not unlike what Jane signs up for in this movie. The aim is to get just enough money to pay debts and hospital bills but the means they have to take for that purpose is fraught with mortal risks.

I like how the medical students are portrayed and the medical school tropes this movie uses. People tend to think that medical students are all the same, living a homogeneous way of life centering on academic endeavour. In reality however, medical students are individuals with their own unique personalities and have a nuanced way of living. Some medical students may be your typical hardworking bookworms but they are also students who are great gamers, consummate parties planners and successful media influencers. Some of the medical students I know in real life are exactly like the characters in this movies. There is also a character who is forced to enter medical school by parents whose family members are all doctors and those fussy parents have this funny subconscious idea that their innate genes would be damaged by a child who doesn't become doctors like them too. That character is very amusing to me considering the people I know in this real world who are also forced to become a medical student by their parents because their exam grades are good. This phenomena is very common among medical students, but it doesn't mean that they cannot become a successful student. Having said that, it is worth highlighting that forcing people to commit to a thing they dislike can gravely affect their emotional well-being, so it would be the best if they are allowed to choose their paths in life based on a genuine passion.

Sci-fi material wise, I like the exploration of the idea of sleep deprivation and seeking a cure for coma, despite the movie not delivering them well. It may set the tones for other science fiction works to draw on the concept and deliver a better story than this movie. Reflecting on the concept of hormones extraction, I can't help but think of an example that exists in our real world (minus the dramatization), insulin hormone extraction. Previously, insulin is harvested from animals but the modern biotechnology breakthrough has allowed us to take the genetic material responsible for the hormone production from humans and insert that genetic part into bacteria so that we can maintain the production of the same hormones without having to extract them from humans or animals again. It would be a great idea if the research companies choose to produce the qratonin hormones using the same way by manipulating bacteria instead of endangering humans. This is sci-fi, a fiction to begin with, so there is no need for an excessive rumination on how the science elements are depicted but it would be fun to explore and imagine the possible ways to twist the story in our mind.

Now let us talk about what I hate about this movie. It runs for about 1 hour and 40 minutes, opening with a suicide scene that gives off an ominous vibe, followed by a gripping lecture on sleep and sleep deprivation. Quickly after that, we are introduced to Jane, an awe-inspiring heroine who is a medical school top scorer but at the same time an OCD survivor juggling her academic studies with huge familial and financial responsibilities. This movie has a strong and promising start but throughout the way, it keeps on flopping and falling flat. When I start this movie, I am expecting a Black Mirror-like sci-fi thriller but that is exactly the problem; I am expecting too much. 

The real thrill only begins about 1 hour later, which is during the last 40 minutes of this movie and please note that I am talking just about the start, not yet the climax which is properly fleshed out only in the last 15 minutes before the movie ends. It feels less like a sci-fi thriller and more like the bog-standard students' life drama that bores me to death. Its only saving graces are the thrill during the last 15 minutes and the good background stories of some of these characters, so I will not say that this movie is totally abysmal without any good at all.

From my perspective, I think this movie is too overhyped by many. There are good things worth highlighting but overall, I would give this movie 5.5/10. Interesting concepts, nice characters with good background stories but poor execution and dull delivery.