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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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The Reef (Film)

by Erin Free | March 14, 2011 14:35 | Edited March 14, 2011 14:36

Taut, suspenseful and finely acted, this delivers both thrills and strong characterisation.

Though the disappointing box office response to Greg McLean's Wolf Creek follow up, Rogue, perhaps proved that Australia has no interest in supporting horror/genre auteurs, writer/director Andrew Traucki obviously doesn't care. After the small but perfectly formed crocodile-attack thriller Black Water, the filmmaker gets back into the water, this time offering up the finely calibrated low budget shark-attack thriller, The Reef. With little money at his disposal, Traucki crafts a tidy exercise in minimalist terror, proving that you don't need much to create a piece of cinema that really works.

 

Seafarer Luke (Damian Walshe-Howling) is preparing to deliver a yacht to Indonesia, and is joined on the trip by his good friend, Matt (Gyton Grantley); Matt's girlfriend, Suzie (Adrienne Pickering); and Matt's sister, Kate (Zoe Naylor), with whom Luke was once involved in a romantic relationship. When the boat is split by a protruding jut of reef, the yacht capsizes, and the terrified group find themselves adrift. Swimming toward distant land, they also quickly realise that they are not alone, as a black fin cuts through the water and heads straight toward them...

 

With The Reef, Andrew Traucki gets his priorities right. Unlike most soft-headed American genre filmmakers, he knows that if we're going to watch four people menaced by a horrifying force for ninety minutes, then we have to care about them, and we do. The film is strongly characterised and superbly performed (with McLeod's Daughters alum Zoe Naylor a particular stand-out), which adds immeasurably to the plot's economic thrill-mongering.

 

Though his resources are scarce - in a set-up that would have Alfred Hitchcock salivating, the film is essentially just four people, an ocean and a shark - Traucki grinds every ounce of suspense and emotion out of them, delivering a taut, inventive, low budget thriller of the first order.

 

And hey, we didn't mention Jaws once! Oh, whoops...