You can’t beat a good killer shark movie. From Jaws onwards, the genre has been a reliable source of frights, with sharks making for terrifying monsters and the coastal setting a fantastic excuse to show pretty Hollywood stars frolicking in swimming costumes. The next major entry will be Australian pic Great White, which comes from the producers of the extremely entertaining 2010 effort The Reef.
Great White is being billed as tapping “into our most primal fear of the deep” and that it’ll deliver “the stuff of nightmares in the form of the ocean’s most dangerous apex predator.” Star Katrina Bowden also describes the script as layered, sweet and heartbreaking, so it looks like it’ll have something for everyone. Now, you can check out a sneak peek of the movie up above, which seems to be using an actual shark model as opposed to the CGI creatures you tend to see these days.
The plot concerns seaplane operators and tourists taking a flight out to the ominously named Hell’s Reef. In a bit of bad luck, they’re promptly stranded miles from shore with two voracious Great White sharks circling them. It looks like terrified tourist is today’s shark lunchtime special.
“The most important thing is that we tell a story and keep it as real as possible for the audience,” says director Martin Wilson. “Under the direction of Production Designer Adam Head, an array of sharks have been built, and by using a combination of techniques we believe Great White will have audiences completely engrossed and convinced it was worth buying the ticket. It’s all about the experience.”
Australians certainly do a good job of making this “as real as possible.” The east coast of the country has seen a disturbing rise in fatal shark attacks, with eight people killed in 2020 alone (six of them by Great Whites). Given that there were no fatal attacks in 2019 (and roughly one per year previously), something is up. Scientists suggest this could be down to change in water temperature, the loss of the shark’s usual prey or related to whale migration patterns, but whatever the reason, now sounds like a good time to put out a killer shark movie.
No word yet on an exact release date for Great White, but expect it sometime over the summer.