At their most basic level, shark attack movies are all the same. That’s why to make one stand out, you need to throw in a little bit of spice. And if you aren’t a blockbuster pioneer like Steven Spielberg, or blowing everything up to gleefully daft proportions like Jon Turteltaub’s The Meg, you need something else. Unfortunately, despite a pretty solid main cast, Great White is an underwater misfire that is confused about where it wants to go, and unable to deliver the thrills that it promises.
When a group of travellers have their seaplane destroyed in a freak accident during an idyllic journey to a coastal paradise, they have no choice but to survive on a life raft until they drift back to shore. On the 100-ish mile journey, they are stalked by a pair of vicious great white sharks who – despite it not being shark season, and despite an apparent abundance of fish around – have developed a taste for human blood. Throw in the odd bloody death and a handful of obligatory Jaws references, and you have yourself a run-of-the-mill water horror adventure.
Director Martin Wilson clearly intends this to be a tense, human-driven horror drama, but it feels at odds with the genre’s deservedly gung-ho reputation. And besides that, this approach is also let down by the narrative’s lack of detail; Great White clearly wants to bring out the human side of the story, yet also tries to get away with as little character depth as possible. Certain elements such as a wife slowly turning against her overly-controlling husband have promise, but are cut abruptly short. Moreover, a racism element is introduced with no context or justification, and instead feels like a cheap way to drive hollow tension. The one exception is in an early scene that sees the group reach the island, a moment that feels surprisingly genuine and allows a glimpse into what the film could have been.
But if you’re like us, you watch films like Great White for the thrills and spills of the ocean’s ultimate predators chowing down on innocent people. So who cares if the characters are paper-thin and uninteresting? Unfortunately, Great White cannot execute the thrills convincingly either. It struggles to be either scary or silly, and any nerve-shredding is immediately undone by developments and climaxes that prove consistently underwhelming. Perhaps inevitably for a low budget flick, the shark CGI is embarrassing, especially when they are partially out of the water. And that’s when you even see them; for a movie about shark attacks, the sharks don’t make an appearance all that often. Plus, the sharks roaring like lions is more tedious than fun.
Great White has a smattering of scenes that hint at what this disappointing underwater melee could have become, perhaps with a bigger budget at its disposal. A long shot of the watery horizon, with the life raft centred and a shark creeping into the bottom of the frame, is about as chillingly effective as it gets. The cast also have a decent stab at things (at one point, literally), particularly Katrina Bowden and Kimie Tsukakoshi, but the weak characterisation and poorly executed central element means that this shark sinks before it can swim.
Great White releases on digital and DVD May 17th.