There’s been a worrying resurgence in cinema of late of filmmakers – mostly male - producing women in peril features. If it’s not suspended in the air as in Fall, then it’s struggling in water as Blake Lively was in 2016’s The Shallows, or the two female protagonists in The Dive. Or perhaps the most horrifying of all, having two female backpackers working in a pub in the Australian outback in the Royal Hotel.

Certainly the women in water in peril theme appears to be a popular one, and is continued here, that finds five women in suitably warm water when an outing before a dream wedding goes horribly wrong.

If you’ve got the money, it’s nice to splash out on a wedding in warmer climes, such as the Dominican Republic, and that’s exactly what Lizzie (Lauren Lyle) is doing. She’s invited her best friends for the occasion, Ruth (Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart), Cam (Nicole Rieko Setsuko) and Meg (Hiftu Quasem). She hasn’t told Meg that Kayla (Natalie Mitson) is also invited, who just so happens to be her ex, who had a messy break up about a year ago. She hopes that they can start to build some bridges before the wedding though.

Cam’s idea for doing so is to take a boat out, which the other girls finding disappointingly small and dinghy-like, out to a nearby deserted island she’s been told about, where they can finally thrash stuff out. So out the five of them go, disappearing into the horizon in good spirits.

They don’t last long however, when one of them gets attacked by a shark in the water, and they all soon find themselves lost at sea – literally – in very dangerous waters.

The first thing to commend about this film is at least it’s written and directed by women, proving women can put women in peril just as well as men. It’s also the film’s weakness too, sadly, as the script is laughable in places, for all the wrong reasons. For instance, it’s difficult to comprehend that women – undoubtedly the smarter of the species – would find time to have a discussion about grammar in the middle of the ocean, with predators circling. Maybe it's supposed to be a moment to lighten the mood, but it just doesn’t work, as don’t a number of exchanges between the characters. It is screenwriter Cat Clarke’s first film, and it does it show, as she struggles throughout to get the balance right of the tone versus the predicament they find themselves in. The only real surprise is that there is no mention of periods and sharks in the same sentence, but you just know they're were thinking about including it.

Hayley Easton Street, making her directorial debut, fairs better with a strong showing behind the camera, on what was an undoubtedly a tricky shoot, as is so often the case in deep water. There clearly wasn’t a great deal of money for special effects, but those featured do manage to impress, and certainly help create that sense of impending danger from their watery surroundings.

The question is, does it actually bring anything new to the women in watery peril sub-genre, and the answer is no. There are some fine performances from all the female characters, but the story is all too generic and predictable, offering no major thrills or surprises whatsoever.

Although you’re likely to be more scared by what’s floating in the waters around the UK coastline, the performances are enough – just – to keep this film afloat.