Some­thing in the Water review – not like­ly to make a splash

Com­pared to some of the more absurd for­ays into the sub­genre of shark-based hor­ror – such as Ghost Shark and Netflix’s lat­est Under Paris – Hay­ley Eas­t­on Street’s Some­thing in the Water keeps things rel­a­tive­ly real­is­tic. After a homo­pho­bic attack that trau­ma­tis­es Meg (Hif­tu Quasem) and her now ex-girl­friend Kay­la (Natal­ie Mit­son), are both invit­ed to a trop­i­cal wed­ding. Jaws may have homo­erot­ic under­tones, but in 2024 the shark movie is no longer queer-cod­ed but overt­ly sap­ph­ic. Along­side the bride (Lau­ren Lyle) and fel­low brides­maids Cam (Nicole Rieko Set­suko) and Ruth (Ellouise Shake­speare-Hart), Meg and Kay­la head out to a seclud­ed island for Lizzie’s last day as a sin­gle woman. But – shock­er – the hen’s par­adise quick­ly turns into a night­mare when they find them­selves strand­ed in the mid­dle of the ocean with…something in the water.

In order for the lurk­ing great white shark to pick each vic­tim off, the pan­ick­ing chum must be kept far from land or hope of res­cue. Writer Cat Clarke does so by sink­ing their boat and hav­ing the bride declare she can’t swim – a state­ment that shat­ters any sus­pen­sion of belief giv­en her choice of an ocean­ic bach­e­lorette loca­tion – leav­ing the group hold­ing onto a float as a haunt­ing fin skims the hori­zon over their shoul­ders. I can for­give the shark’s insa­tiable hunger but the con­trived plot is a splash in the face.

Despite this con­trived nar­ra­tive and the group’s aggra­vat­ing attempts at humour that land like dead fish – includ­ing mul­ti­ple ​“that’s what she said” lines and a ​“not a today Satan” – Some­thing in the Water suc­ceeds in cre­at­ing ten­sion. By vary­ing aer­i­al shots, close-ups and the views from below of the sur­vivors tread­ing feet, the film evokes the unique­ly unset­tling feel­ing of feel­ing trapped in vast waters, and while no shark death has ever come close to Stel­lan Skars­gard hav­ing his arm ripped off mid-cig­a­rette in Deep Blue Sea, there is a fair bal­ance here between gar­gled screams in bloody water and the unseen loss­es. But for long-time shark fans, there is noth­ing new on offer.

The shark film has often attempt­ed to high­light the vio­lent hand of human cor­rup­tion, and giv­en the cur­rent state of the plan­et, it seems only right to men­tion water pol­lu­tion while con­trast­ing the idyl­lic ocean with deep sea hor­rors. While Under Paris went for the hyper­bol­ic approach with cli­mate change cre­at­ing a Seine-dwelling beast that breeds at impos­si­ble speed, Some­thing in the Water rais­es the top­ic in more sub­tle ways – the coral reefs are not the bright tourist attrac­tion of the brochure, and stray­ing from the main attrac­tions has land­ed the bridal par­ty in iso­lat­ed waters with a hun­gry shark sick of snack­ing on plas­tic for com­pa­ny. But oth­er than these com­ments, Some­thing in the Water bobs along like many oth­er sur­vival­ist shark thrillers, and with­out find­ing new ways to jump the shark, it’s just anoth­er drop in the subgenre’s ocean.