Review: The Reef: Stalked

Nine months after her sister was brutally murdered by her psycho husband, Teressa Liane is in the Pacific islands with her friends (Kate Lister and Ann Truong) as well as her youngest sister (Saskia Archer). A kayaking trip turns deadly when a great white shark turns up to feed on them.

 

Andrew Traucki was the co-director of the excellent, terrifying crocodile film “Black Water”, but I wasn’t a fan of his rather bland solo effort “The Reef”, a rather by-numbers shark film. I did rather enjoy his follow-up to “Black Water”, the quite effective “Black Water: Abyss” which wasn’t too far off the mark of the first film. This 2022 sequel from the writer-director is unfortunately a step backwards not only from “Black Water: Abyss” but it’s even worse than “The Reef”.

 

I suppose it’s nice to have an almost 100% female cast and strong-willed characters at that, but it’s also nothing original in that regard (“The Descent”), let alone enough to save this subpar outing. Even if you’re a fan of shark movies, let’s be honest: It’s “Jaws”, “Open Water” and…end of list. This isn’t even on the level of a “Jaws 2” or “Jaws 3-D”, to where the undemanding might be somewhat satisfied. This is a dreadfully written film that wastes an ungodly amount of time being about anything other than a shark attacking people. The film has an extended opener involving a killer boyfriend, and unless he somehow swapped bodies with a shark Charles Lee Ray style, there’s no reason for such a chunk of time devoted to something so unnecessary and counterproductive to audience engagement. Character development is cool, time-wasting with a barely tangentially relevant subplot is not. The Queensland scenery is stunning, the cast of Aussie actresses is shockingly flat for something that relies so heavily on them. Lead actress Teressa Liane is especially out of her depth (despite plenty of TV credits), young Saskia Archer is marginally better, but the rest are pretty amateurish.

 

Boring in-name-only sequel wants to be “The Descent” but the cast can’t pull it off, and audience engagement is rendered null and void well before the shark even shows up. It looks nice, but so what? I think Mr. Traucki needs to stick to crocodiles, he has much better luck with them.

 

Rating: D+

 

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