Great White (2021)
"Take your final breath"
Plot
A fun filled flight to a remote atoll turns into a nightmare for five passengers when their seaplane is destroyed in a freak accident and they are trapped on a raft, hundreds of miles from shore and with man-eating sharks lurking beneath the surface.
Going back to basics with killer shark films after years of ridiculous sharksploitation nonsense is a step in the right direction for the sub-genre, though for every serious The Reef or The Shallows, there seems to be a million Mountain Shark, Zombie Shark and Roboshark released at the same time. The big problem with all of them is that there’s literally nothing new to do with the sub-genre. It was done perfectly the first time in Jaws and everyone has since then has struggled to find a way to recreate that pure sense of terror and dread. Great White is on the more serious end of the scale for most of its running time, but it doesn’t do an awful lot with the material, seemingly borrowing the same setup as 2018’s Surrounded and simply adding a few more characters to the life raft.
Great White is just too dull and uninspiring for its own good. You do need some setup to base your shark action around but the unnecessary melodrama between the five characters once they get stranded on the raft comes off as very forced, sluggishly tying the film down when it needs to get going after a promising opening third. The script doesn’t flesh them out enough and resorts to simple character tropes to add some flavour (one of them is pregnant, another one jealous, another one has some back story with sharks, etc). The soap opera dramatics and dialogue try to increase the tension, but it’s focused on the wrong things. There are not enough characters here for this type of character and the story needs all of them working together in order for this simple setup to work effectively – surviving this shark ordeal should be their main priority, not the petty squabbles and bickering between them that could be settled if and when they make it to shore. It’s what sensible people would not, not movie characters.
The script raises its head again and Great White becomes problematic in the middle third – these characters are stranded floating around in the middle of nowhere and its night so the need for some unnecessary drama to create a bit of peril starts making them do some rather silly things. Contrivances and conveniences start to flow freely. Case in point: one character jumping into the shark-infested sea and swimming a good twenty feet to retrieve a paddle, all the while looking around on the surface of the water for a sign of the shark. Now correct me if I’m wrong but great whites are more active in low light conditions, will be attacking from beneath their prey and doing so at great speeds, not flashing a bit of fin on the surface and slowly making their way to their target so that they can be seen. The sharks also spend a good portion of the time swimming around the raft, only to tip it over with one hit the minute the script needs to throw all the characters into the ocean. There’s only one thing to describe this – lazy writing and Great White is full of it. Things happen purely to further the plot or to attempt to create tension because the writers don’t know any other way.
Great White isn’t your average looking shark film though and the cinematography is fantastic. From the clear waters which stretch for miles to the desert island with its sandy beaches and flowing greenery, this really does feel like the characters are hundreds of miles away from safety. It’s the perfect place to throw humans into the path of something monstrous. We don’t see much of the sharks, though the glimpses we do get for most of the film are passable enough. The more you see of them during the finale, the less impressive they look but the sharks look believable enough for the audience to buy in. The attack scenes are fairly generic, with characters being pulled underwater with some red water bubbling to the surface, but there’s so few characters in the film to be killed off that it doesn’t really make much difference. I’m also pretty sure there’s a bit of roaring in there too, something which really bugs me as sharks have no vocal chords to make noises with! Whilst the rest of the film is grounded in reality, Great White’s final third ratches up the silliness a bit more, with characters firing flare guns off underwater and mounting the shark’s back to stab away at it. It’s quite a change of approach which works to inject a bit of life and energy into Great White but it’s too little too late.
The cast are all good looking and have been presumably chosen for that particular trait. Katrina Bowden and Aaron Jakubenko are likeable enough leads but there’s little chemistry between them outside of generic “good looking people flock together” cinematic logic. Tim Kano’s Joji is such an asshole right from the start of the film that it’s impossible to empathise with him and want him to survive, especially when he makes some poor choices which have wide-ranging impacts later on. None of the characters really act like real people which has been Great White’s underlying problem all along – the script.
Final Verdict
Great White goes through the motions and ticks plenty of boxes, offering up some thrills and spills along the way. But the script is terrible, stripping away common sense and replacing it with plot machinations that exist solely to put the characters in peril with the absence of genuine suspense. There isn’t a solid level of excitement or entertainment to maintain interest throughout, allowing the film to drift as aimlessly as the raft does.
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Great White Director(s): Mark Wilson Writer(s): Michael Boughen Actor(s): Katrina Bowden, Aaron Jakubenko, Kimie Tsukakoshi, Tim Kano, Te Kohe Tuhaka Duration: 91 mins |  |
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