Full of cliche-riddled dialogue and bizarre flashbacks, this basic effort is only saved by a tacked-on lecture from Jaws star Dreyfuss

This pulpy yet weirdly woo-woo nautical thriller sets good-guy treasure hunters on a collision course with drug smugglers (bad guys) and great white sharks (morally neutral but still voracious). It’s like the plot was dreamed up by a hack who overheard his six-year-old pitting Lego figurines against one another. You start to expect that any minute Batman or Unikitty will join the fray which – frankly – would be an improvement. What we get instead is tired, cliche-riddled dialogue and bizarre flashbacks in which lead good guy Cassie (Scout Taylor-Compton) remembers how her oceanographer grandpa (Richard Dreyfuss!) encouraged her to face her fears in the water after she witnessed a great white kill her father when she was a kid.

Now an adult and an expert diver, Cass has returned to the same coastline where daddy got munched, this time with her husband, Gregg (Callum McGowan) who is looking for a shipwreck. Gregg’s old friend Benz (Stuart Townsend) is the captain of the ship they have hired, along with a first mate and some disposable supporting characters who end up as shark bait when feeding time begins. That happens because the ship is overtaken by a bunch of ex-Navy Seals (led by a charisma-free Jon Seda) who press gang Cass, Gregg and the others to dive for some sunken drug parcels.