The Reef: Stalked (2022)
The 2010 original is, to my mind, simply one of the best shark films ever made. Indeed, if
Jaws wasn't so embedded in my top spot, I would view
The Reef as the #1 film of its kind. Like the earlier croc film
Black Water, from the same team, it turns any limitations into strength by giving a film based on simplicity with a small cast, a taut story based on real-life events, and realistic animal behaviour with no CGI or animatronics. It's also very Australian, which is no bad thing.
When it was released, I read a couple of comments about
Stalked that suggested it didn't live up to the original, so I went in with expectations lowered. All the same, it's a very disappointing film for anyone who has seen the original.
The film suffers with major sequelitis. The subtlety and tension-building of the first film seems to be present at first (at least, once we're past the "
Home and Away does domestic violence" stuff which takes up too much of the first half an hour). We spend some time feeling uncomfortable in the water, but without any sign of a shark. Then there's a little splash nearby, and by the time we look there's just a ripple on the surface. This is the kind of thing the first film did so well.
But once the protagonists begin to understand what's happening, all subtlety goes out of the window and it attempts to lean heavily into Hollywood popcorn fare: the White Shark pursuing them is huge and relentless and - unlike the original film which got into our heads by leaving questions about if there is indeed (still) a shark nearby - there are very few windows where it's not attacking or about to attack. They leave the shark on one side of the island, get into a boat on another side and as soon as they're on their way again, up pops the shark. We see far too much of it. As I remember, in
The Reef, we only saw the shark from the characters' perspectives, which was genuinely creepy. In
Stalked, we cut away to shots of the shark swimming nearby and are even treated to
Jaws-type shark POV shots as it approaches them. The shark also helpfully waves its dorsal fin (which looks quite cardboard-y) again and again so we and the characters know where it is, which immediately removes any suspense. A few shots appear to use CGI, and it looks very poor indeed in these moments.
All of Andrew Traucki's animal attack films have a degree of soap opera tension: 2007's
Black Water has the woman revealing to her sister (but not her husband) that she's pregnant; 2010's
The Reef has the on again/off again couple (currently off again) ending up at sea together; 2020's
Black Water: Abyss has that annoying love quadrangle, with the slutty woman pregnant. All of the films also feature a theme of female empowerment or women as "survivors" that - because they're something more than slasher films- feels like something more than the "final girl" trope.
Stalked takes these elements to a different level with an unmistakable "girl power" vibe. All the main cast is female. They land on an island inhabited solely by women (apart from one boy who is quickly forgotten when his sister becomes more important to the story). And this is where the "backstory" comes in, with the lead character suffering from post traumatic stress due to her sister's untimely murder one year earlier. This element works at times since her sister's drowning means that water triggers creatively shot flashbacks for her. And what better activity to overcome her aquaphobia than taking tiny kayaks out onto the open ocean for several days.
This means the only man with any kind of role in the story is violent, controlling and abusive. And the misandry doesn't stop there. We get all metaphorical with it, with the shark itself becoming a less-than-subtle symbol of the abusive predatory male forcing its unwanted attention on helpless females (don't point out that they're in its habitat attracting it by splashing and spearfishing, because that would be victim blaming) . We just know this shark is male, because the film all but tells us that a female one would be much more helpful and supportive. One of the characters even pointedly reminds us of the surfies' nickname for the Great White: "the
man in the grey suit".
And with this theme in place, it's not enough to simply survive, which was enough of an objective for the 2010 film. In 2022 the oppressor must be cancelled. Which means Old Testament/Hollywood destruction. There are some stupid decisions taken during the course of the film, but the one that took the biscuit for me was when the protagonist refused to paddle the tiny boat any further and announced to her girlfriends they needed to kill the giant shark themselves (and sod the Great White's "vulnerable" status, I suppose. After all, anything Blake Lively can do...). What comes next is beyond ridiculous.
It's a decently acted film with lovely scenery and some very promising moments that ultimately ends up cannibalising itself with its pseudo-feminist message, like a gutted shark eating its own intestines. Forget this one and treat yourself to watching the original 2010 film.
