Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Reef in 150 Words or Less

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What works so well with The Reef is the silence. It doesn't slather its scares in sound-effects trickery - there's no BOOM! sound attacking you in the face when the shark slides into view. The camera just looks into the murk for a long long long time and then there it is, coming towards us. You might hear the gentle slap of a fin on the water, and that is more than enough. See, that BOOM! sound gives you some release - you can jump in your seat and laugh at yourself and feel a little better. It turns everything into a game of roller-coasting adrenaline. Not here - here director Andrew Traucki (who also made the similarly riveting crocodile attack movie Black Water) is relentless once the horror begins, which is as it should be - that shark isn't playing any games.

10 comments:

Joe Reid said...

Better than Open Water? (I hope.)

Jason Adams said...

See I kind of liked Open Water, but yes this is definitely better - the people aren't half as loathsome and it feels much brisker. It's short, which is what a shark-attack movie needs to be. You can only sustain this sort of thing for so long if you're taking it seriously (meaning you don't have Thomas Jane in a spandex jumpsuit and Sam Jackson chomped in half in the air). It has a great ending.

Plus it's on Netflix Instant! What more could you want! (Besides Thomas Jane in a spandex jumpsuit and Sam Jackson chomped in half in the air.)

Jason Adams said...

Oh and I want to add that this shark is the most single-minded bitch since that time Jaws followed Mrs. Brody all the way down to the Bahamas and she had to stab it with a ship. It just refuses to cut these people a fucking break.

Adam said...

I love this and Black Water so much. Traucki is the only director who approaches hating nature as much as I do.

Ryan said...

Only a B? Come on now, JA ;)

One thing is for sure; this is the *scariest* shark/creature-in-the-water film since JAWS. No question. And far better than OPEN WATER.

KARL said...

who's pumped for SHARK NIGHT 3D!

Tara said...

God, when Ellen stabs the shark with the ship...what a great ending. I'd like to think she was channeling Martin then. Still, she seems to have her shit together in the first movie when she says, "Did you hear your father? Out of the water now!" I can hear that sass in her voice.

Anonymous said...

Would you recommend drinking two bahama mamas while watching The reef?

Jason Adams said...

anon - I don't recommend watching anything without having had two Bahama Mama s first. Two Bahama Mamas are a given in any given circumstance!

Tara - That lady had sass pouring out the pockets of her capri pants.

Ryan it might've coulda been a B+ but I did have some problems with it - the picking off order was obvious from the start and I really wished they would've surprised us with it. They went right down the line - less-handsome man dies first so the good-looking man has to protect both ladies, then less-handsome's distraught less-pretty girfriend dies, so on.

And the BRAVE menfolk beside HYSTERICAL women thing was a little bit too pronounced.

Dale said...

Man, now I'm really regretting not seeing this when it was out in theatres here. Although I am disappointed to hear about the Brave/Hysterical thing. I could kind of see that in Black Water up until you-know-who died halfway through, and then Lee and Grace were coping fine on their own anyway. And I seriously loved Lee, and I thought she was very brave - or well, she was a naturally kind of wussy person who was very, very brave in spite of that when her sister needed her.

So yeah, kind of annoyed to hear that The Reef falls into such a common gender trap in horror. But it's good to hear about the rest of it, and it'd be nice to see a movie which has the same idea as Open Water but executes it better.