by James Fletcher
One of the most popular staples in the horror genre would have to be shark attack films, built on a slew of entries that range from low budget parodies (looking at you Sharknado) to a tsunami of questionable quasi-horror releases such as 1977’s Mexican soft-core porn Tintorera… Tiger Shark, the Daryl Hannah headlined chum-bucket Shark Swarm (2008) and the inexplicable 2009 Japanese Horror/Comedy Jaws in Japan. But the popularity, and frequency of these films didn’t just appear from nowhere, and while the genre has its fair share of catalogue footnotes, major Hollywood Studios still invest in star driven thrillers such as The Meg and The Shallows, all of which owe their success to Spielberg’s Jaws, the film that literally launched he blockbuster phenomenon and took horror mainstream.
The latest shark infused survival thriller comes with the release of Great White, not to be mistaken for the 1982 Italian flick of the same name which plagiarised Jaws so badly that Universal sued to have the film pulled from screens, and won.
Directed by Australian Martin Wilson, Great White marks the Perth based filmmaker’s first feature, having found success off the back of his short Wait ‘til Your Father Gets Home, as well as the acclaimed collaboration with boxer Danny Green in creating the Cowards Punch TV campaign.
“I was so embracing and so grateful to get the opportunity to make a film that I just dived in headfirst,” reveals Wilson via Zoom from his production office when asked about taking the reigns of Great White “And I love the genre. I’ve loved many of the shark films in the past, so it was a great opportunity, a great fit for me, and it really suited my taste. I was super excited.”
Shot on location in and around Queensland’s Peel Island with a modest budget rumoured at around six million dollars, coupled with a bruising shooting schedule of just 25 days, Great White certainly doesn’t leave anything behind. Edited by Lawrie Silvestrin, whose previous work includes the true crime doco Wild Butterfly and TV’s Who Do You Think You Are?, the survival thriller, as Wilson categorises his film, manages to find an effective balance of tension and narrative, a tricky attribute that has seen more than one genre film fail, and one which Wilson understands all too well.
“My biggest influences are Hitchcock and of course, Spielberg, but potentially Hitchcock would be my biggest,” he explains, “I’ve studied his movies to the nth degree, every frame. I knew that even if you don’t have the money, you can still have the suspense.”
And as for the demanding schedule the film was shot under? Wilson responds with genuine affection and pride, and perhaps what could even be interpreted as a nostalgic fondness for the grueling shoot.
“I’m still recovering from it,” he jokes. “Whenever you’re shooting in the elements, and in particular water, it adds a layer of complication, which really does test you. Because, with the tides, the wind and so forth, once you lose an hour or two out of the schedule, you’ve got to try and make it back over the coming days.
“Or if you go into a tank and you need to change a lens, for example, you’ve got to bring the camera out, take off the underwater housing, put that lens on, etc.
“We had 25 days to do this film, and looking back, it just seems like an impossible task.”
While the production of Great White may have figuratively taken place inside a pressure tank, Wilson has nothing but praise for his cast – a dynamic quartet including Australian actors Kimie Tsukakoshi (The Bureau of Magical Things), Aaron Jakubenko (Shannara Chronicles), Tim Kano (Neighbours) and American import Katrina Bowden (best known for her role as Cerie on the Tina Fey comedy 30 Rock), who literally spent a great deal of their days on set waterlogged, feigning terror, anger and projecting suspicion in order to build the film’s emotional core.
“Yeah, they just jumped in,” Wilson reveals. “They were so embracing and wanted to really enjoy the process of filming this type of action, shooting in the elements, in the water.
“We had Aaron Jakubenko who had done Tidelands, and who’d done an enormous amount of training in the water and holding his breath. And he really brought that to the other cast members. Even on his days off, he would be up at the hotel pool helping the other guys.
“And Katrina Bowden was just so embracing of the role and the demands, she just wanted to also dive in head-first and really show her wares in another way, different from other roles that she’s done. I was so lucky to have these guys on board.”
But as with any shark-based film, Wilson reveals his protagonist was perhaps his most difficult character to craft into the film’s final cut.
“I know in Jaws they had Bruce, which was named after Spielberg’s lawyer, but our shark was called Brenda,” he explains after a good-natured eye-roll “I still don’t know where the name came from, but it certainly wasn’t named after anyone’s lawyer.
“There’s the CG shark, there’s the stock shark, and then there’s an animatronic shark. It was just a combination of different shots, a combination of so many different locations, on the beach, out in the ocean, out at Peel Island, out on a massive prawn farm on the Gold Coast, in various water tanks… it’s a patchwork quilt of locations and different approaches.
“You look at the first cuts with all the green screens and, I remember thinking, it would drive someone crazy to watch all that. But, eventually as it comes together, bit by bit, you start feeling a little bit more relaxed.”
Wilson’s baptism by fire, or water as the case may be, with Great White hasn’t deterred the director from his love of genre films, as a brief discussion regarding his upcoming projects firmly reveals that the creature feature genre may have a new rising star in its midst.
“I want to be working in this genre world, which I love,” he explains with palatable enthusiasm “I have a project about the big cat legend in the Australian bush. The concept I have is very much like an Australian version of Standby By Me crossed with The Ghost and the Darkness; a group of teenagers going off to uncover this legend in Southwest or Western Australia.”
And the other project?
“Some of my other favourite movies are The Thing and Aliens. I love those films,” laughs Wilson “And so it’s a very tense suspense movie set on a plane, 30,000 feet above the earth where there’s an experiment gone wrong, and a bomb on the plane, and all sorts of other things.
“Basically, it’s werewolves on a plane.”
GREAT WHITE will be available to buy on all major digital platforms June 30, and on Blu-ray, DVD and digital rental July 7.
