SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Written By:

Paul Mount

Shark movies come, shark movies go. Most of them tend to disappear under the radar, cheap and cheerless efforts forever swimming in the wake of Jaws, the granddaddy of them all. There have been a couple of more commendable efforts this year including Netflix’s recent hit Under Paris and now Hayley Easton Street’s Something in the Water, which delivers a shark shocker that puts more emphasis on its core cast – a group of young English tourists gathering at a Caribbean resort unwisely decided to spend a day at a remote and uninhabited island with unfortunate consequences – than the usual aquatic antics involving a predatory shark. Have no fear, though; one of our blood-hungry friends eventually looms large in the film, setting off the chain of events that puts our cast in deadly peril. However, Something in the Water is keen to exploit the idea that the sea offers threats other than hungry sharks.

It’s an intriguing set-up. Following a brutal homophobic assault in Camden that caused their relationship to shatter, Meg (Hiftu Quasem) and Kayla (Natalie Mitson) travel across the world to attend the wedding of their friend Lizzie (Lauren Lyle). The girls – including their mutual friends Cam (Nicole Rieko Setsuko) and Ruth (Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart) – set off for a day of sun and sand at a desert island miles away from the mainland. Tragedy strikes when one of them is savaged by a shark, and the girls bundle back aboard their rust-bucket boat piloted by Lizzie, who, inexperienced, sends it straight into a reef where it’s torn open, and the girls are flung into the water. You can guess what happens next…

In truth, Something in the Water is inescapably derivative, but clearly some effort has been made to put some meat on the bones of the girls – Cam is a crazy party girl, Ruth is more measured and cautious, Meg and Kayla still bear the scars of the incident that tore them apart, leaving a simmering resentment between them. It’s refreshing, too, that the cast are Brits abroad and out of their depth (literally) instead of the usual gung-ho all-American hunks and supermodels. When the girls end up in the water, their dire situation – one of them is in danger of bleeding to death, another can’t swim, and they’re all miles away from the mainland – gets even more desperate. Nicely photographed and genuinely cinematic, Something in the Water generates some palpable tension in its final act. It seems likely that it’s only gaining a theatrical release in the UK because last year’s American industry strikes bottle-necked the availability of more typical big-screen fare, but this is a good-looking, well-crafted film that doesn’t rewrite the shark movie rule book (there must be one) but provides a decent 85 minutes of familiar finny fear.