The Deep is based on a 1984 incident, famous in Iceland, in which a fishing boat sank in icy waters leaving all of the crew dead… except for one man, Gulli, who miraculously managed to swim to shore. There are a couple factors that make The Deep stand out from other disaster survival movies. To begin with, Gulli isn’t a particularly heroic type. He is overweight, drinks too much and is pretty much a normal guy. In addition, breaking the rules of the genre, Gulli reaches shore midway through the film, a plot point usually reserved for the climax. We then follow Gulli as he deals with survivor guilt and with the curiosity of scientists who can’t figure out what it is about him that kept him alive.