The Movie: Great White
The Director: Martin Wilson
The Cast: Katrina Bowden, Aaron Jakubenko, Kimie Tsukakoshi, Tim Kano, Te Kohe Tuhaka
The Story: A blissful tourist trip turns into a nightmare when five seaplane passengers are stranded miles from shore. In a desperate bid for survival, the group try to make it to land before they either run out of supplies or are taken by a menacing terror lurking just beneath the surface.
The Review:
We all know Steven Spielberg's Jaws which is widely considered the original blockbuster, one of the greatest horror films ever made, one of the greatest movies ever made, and the reason so many people refused to find their way into any sort of body of water. What all that means in the context of this movie is that any shark movie ever made will be inevitably compared to Jaws, fairly or not, so a cast and crew that takes on this endeavor should be prepared and at the same time have the ability to move forward with their own creation.
The story that plays out in this movie is about as simple as could possibly be. People go out on the water, are attacked by sharks, and not everyone survives. I mean, that's pretty much what you're looking for here without too much else to get in the way and that's exactly what first time feature director Martin Wilson brings to the table. Sure there is plot and character development and conversations that are had but it's all kind of meaningless which is just fine because what matters is we want to see sharks attacking people. That's why we show up for a horror movie named great White.
I'll be honest with you, I kind of expected and even wanted a little bit to not like this movie because there are so many ways it could go wrong but it's really not that bad for the exact reason I just mentioned, it knows exactly the movie it is trying to be. Where Jaws had a very human side to it with Roy Scheider's character having a family and there were real dangers for men women and children across the board, Wilson takes a group of generic characters and throws them to the wolves, or sharks in this case of course.
We have the young couple hoping for a better future, another young couple honoring a past relative, and the random other guy with no real connection so you kind of get the idea where he might be headed. This isn't complicated, it's lining up targets and then seeing which ones go first and which ones may or may not make it all the way to the end credits, if any of them. That's all I was really looking for and that's what I got so job well done.
The Verdict:
Great White takes a bite out of the shark infested waters of the horror genre and stays afloat by not taking too deep of a dive into what could have been a bloody mess of a movie.
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