GREAT WHITE (REVIEW)

Dir. Martin Wilson

Reviewer. Dan Cook

There are good shark movies. There are bad shark movies. And there are some that fall in between to be simply OK. Martin Wilson’s GREAT WHITE comfortably falls under the latter.

Telling the story of a group of people who are left stranded in the middle of the ocean with a couple of large and very hungry fish, GREAT WHITE plays very much like a standard shark survival thriller, regularly repeating scare tactics and building tension in ways that have already been done in countless other films such as OPEN WATER, THE SHALLOWS and, most noticeably, THE REEF. To its credit the characters, while not particularly well-written, are likeable enough and the direction from Wilson is decidedly solid.

However, the chum bucket of mediocre shark films is already overfilled and GREAT WHITE is merely a tiny fly hovering around it, regularly pausing to suck in the decaying nutrients of other, more involving movies.

Hey, look at that. I’ve just reviewed a shark movie without once mentioning ‘Jaws’.....DAMN!