Worth: $17.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Teressa Liane, Saskia Archer, Ann Truong, Kate Lister, Tim Ross
Intro:
...an engagingly thoughtful aquatic fright-fest of the first order.
If films like Waterworld, Titanic, Jaws and so on have long served as lessons on how difficult it is to shoot movies on location on water, then Australian director Andrew Traucki has been gleefully ignoring them. This savvy and inventive local filmmaker has indeed built a successful indie career on doing just that, with two killer crocodile flicks (Black Water, Black Water: Abyss), a killer shark thriller (The Reef), and even his entry (“G Is For Gravity”) in the horror portmanteau The ABCs Of Death. Now, Andrew Traucki reaps watery rewards once again with the compelling thriller The Reef: Stalked, a sequel in theme only to his impressive 2010 effort, The Reef.
After a horrific family tragedy, the still shell-shocked Nic (Neighbours and The Vampire Diaries alum Teressa Liane, who delivers a very strong and emotive performance) joins her younger sister Annie (Saskia Archer) and two friends Jodie (Ann Truong) and Lisa (Kate Lister) on a diving holiday somewhere off the pristine Queensland coast. Paddling from island to island on kayaks, the four young women very soon realise that they are being relentlessly hunted and pursued by a shark. Alone and terrified, it will take all of their bravery and ingenuity to survive.
With a clear wealth of on-water experience, Andrew Traucki once again mines the shark attack cinematic trope for all it’s worth here, with the film’s on-location shoot and impressively realistic scenes of aquatic monstering skilfully ratcheting up the tension levels. No mythic sea creature, the shark of The Reef: Stalked is wholly, believably real, which makes it all the more menacing. Apart from his boundless skill in creating tension and scares, Traucki’s other impressive feat here is in making his protagonists so likeable. This is a nice, supportive group of young women (played very well by a fresh young cast), and you literally don’t want to see them get killed. And like so many strong horror films, The Reef: Stalked also works well on an allegorical level, with the looming, menacing, seemingly unstoppable shark a well-wrought metaphor for grief, trauma, guilt and pain. Skilfully and imaginatively crafted, The Reef: Stalked is an engagingly thoughtful aquatic fright-fest of the first order.
