The Reef: Stalked (2022)
Directed by Andrew Traucki
After her sister's murder, Nic, her younger sister and two friends seek solace through a Pacific island kayaking adventure. Hours into the trip the women are stalked by a shark and must band together, face their fears and save each other.
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8 films that influenced The Reef: Stalked
What critics say influenced The Reef: Stalked
They will always be compared to Jaws .
There’s a Jaws -lite theme tune, more urgent and louder for modern audiences, naturally, that does the job nicely and the characters seem to be in genuine peril throughout, likely due to the demonstrably physically demanding shoot.
Ever since Jaws in 1975, sharks have been a perennial on screen.
If films like Waterworld , Titanic , Jaws and so on have long served as lessons on how difficult it is to shoot movies on location on water, then Australian director Andrew Traucki has been gleefully ignoring them.
While we’re on the topic of Jaws , surely the season would be incomplete without at least one shark thriller.
Why was Jaws made nearly fifty years ago with a shark that looks more believable than one made in an era with elaborate films shot on cell phones?
The setup is a little like Neil Marshall’s The Descent : a group of girlfriends goes scuba diving in the ocean instead of spelunking in a cave system before a family tragedy changes everything.
It also seems to steal a page from director Neil Marshall, using a plot very similar to that of “The Descent”, only changing the caves for the ocean and the misshapen creatures for sharks.
Then there was Open Water , which was sharks + real life, taking the true story of two American tourists left behind by their tour boat off the coast of Australia.
After Open Water but before 47 Meters Down, there was the 2010 Australian import The Reef.
I’d recommend watching Shark Bait or Deep Blue Sea 3 first for a more entertaining ride.
So far in 2022, I’ve already steered clear of Alicia Silverstone in The Requin and avoided Shark Bait , but The Reef: Stalked was too intriguing to pass up.
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Instead of a Final Destination -style car accident, Nic (Teressa Liane) ends up finding her sister, Cath (Saskia Hampele), dead in the bathtub, having been drowned by Cath’s abusive husband.
Similar to The Shallows (easily the best shark movie of the last decade), it also makes good use out of characters being close but not close enough to land to make a swim for it.
– of The Shallows, but it’s nowhere near as cynically superfluous as The Requin.
You don’t have to be Mandy Moore in “47 Meters Down” or Blake Lively in “The Shallows” to be good at mimicking that normal human terror and panic.
This savvy and inventive local filmmaker has indeed built a successful indie career on doing just that, with two killer crocodile flicks ( Black Water , Black Water: Abyss ), a killer shark thriller ( The Reef ), and even his entry (“G Is For Gravity”) in the horror portmanteau The ABCs Of Death .
Written, co-produced and directed by Andrew Traucki ( Black Water: Abyss ; The Jungle ; The ABCs of Death ‘G is for Gravity’ segment; The Reef ; Black Water ).
This is the same tactic Traucki took with 2020’s Black Water: Abyss , a follow-up to his 2007 debut (co-directed with David Nerlich) Black Water .
Director Andrew Traucki (“The Reef,” “Black Water”) steals a page from director Johannes Roberts (“47 Meters Down”) by offering a sequel to a popular shark movie that is nothing like its predecessor.
To complete his track record of making an in-name-only-with-a-colon follow-up to a based-on-a-true-story nightmare ( Black Water and Black Water: Abyss ), writer-director Traucki is back for The Reef: Stalked , a decent but technically uneven time in the water that only does the bare minimum.
According to a pretty definitive list on Letterboxd – the online film community – there are in excess of 170 shark-related films and adding to that list is The Reef: Stalked , an indirect sequel to 2010’s The Reef .
The Reef: Stalked – ostensibly an incredibly late sequel to 2010’s The Reef, but not really – has the wildest opening of any sharksploitation movie, maybe ever.
Writer-director Andrew Traucki’s sequel to his 2010 film “The Reef” has some excellent shark attack footage and manages a couple of passably suspenseful “Jaws” like moments of waiting for the worst to happen.