Review of Something in the Water

After seeing one of her party members being chomped by an ocean apex predator, Manchester bride-to-be Lizzie (Lauren Lyle) exclaims, "You brought us to shark-infested waters the day before my wedding!"

In the Caribbean for a destination wedding, a group of friends are left stranded by a lack of life jackets, a single float, and a leaky boat as Mr. Shark makes his way to them. Director Hayley Easton Street's debut feature is essentially Bridezilla vs. Jaws, closer to the small-scale, low-fi thrills of Open Water and 47 Metres Down than the high seas camp of Deep Blue Sea and The Meg. The outcome is predictable and unsurprising; it could serve best as a warning to those self-centered individuals who pressure their friends to pay exorbitant fees for extravagant weddings overseas.

A film with an all-female cast is extremely unusual, and Something In The Water almost achieves this feat. However, the groom's (Gabriel Prevost-Takahashi) fleeting cameo undermines this achievement. In addition to Lizzie, the cast includes eco-bore Ruth (Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart), ringleader Cam (Nicole Rieko Setsuko), Meg (Hiftu Quasem), and Kayla (Natalie Mitson), an ex-couple who broke up after Meg was traumatized by a homophobic attack and are now hesitantly getting back together.

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The cast does a great job portraying the group amity (not Amity) in Cat Clarke's screenplay (Good Omens, Ten Percent), which has some good gags and the patience to spend time with its characters before mayhem — there's dancing to S Club Seven's "Reach," jokes about the Titanic, and enough friendship bracelets to rival a Taylor Swift gig. Although the film is faithful to the genre, there are some incredibly dumb decisions made, and the bickering gets monotonous. Additionally, the tone of the film is mostly serious, making it unclear whether Meg's name is a knowing reference to Jason Statham's antagonist. The characters lack depth, and the dynamics never feel textured or true.

When it gets to the open seas, the action follows every plot device in a shark flick playbook without ever raising the stakes. Examples include the boat that passes by but doesn't pick up our heroes because the movie is only in its second act, the blood in the water that serves as a shark's catnip, flashbacks in which characters are seen bobbing up and down in the water, the nighttime torrential rainstorm, and the small patch of reef that gives the last girl some respite.

The money appears to have predominantly gone into the breathtaking settings (which are actually in the Dominican Republic) and the overuse of drone views, so the sharks are essentially only depicted as circling fins with sporadic bursts of good computer graphics at the very end. It's not quite lifeless in the water, but you'll quickly realize just how big it is—head, tail, the entire darn thing.