The Reef: Stalked movie review

MOVIE TITLE: The Reef: Stalked

This Australian shark movie swims into select theaters and is on VOD on July 29, 2022.

RATING: R

LENGTH: 1 hour and 33 minutes

MOVIE REVIEW MOM GRADE: C-

IN A NUTSHELL:

Welcome to Shark Week!

After her sister’s murder, Nic and her friends gather on a Pacific island for a kayak adventure. During the trip, the women are stalked by a shark and must band together, face their fears, and save each other.

In Nov. 2020, it was announced pre-production was underway on a sequel to 2010’s Australian shark movie The Reef was written and directed by Andrew Traucki returning to direct.

THINGS I LIKED:

We get to visit Australia, as well as another Pacific island.
The cast includes Teressa Liane from The Vampire Diaries, but the rest of the cast includes faces most American audiences won’t recognize: Ann Truong, Saskia Archer, Kate Lister, and Tim Ross.
The cinematography was by Justin Brickle.
I had never heard the expression “The man in the grey suit” to refer to sharks before. Have you?
The water ripples and waves look really good and the shark looks very real.
The movie attempts to give us a backstory to add depth to why one of the characters would be so fearful of water.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

Other than a brutal murder at the beginning of the movie, it takes a long time for the action to get going.
Guys might be disappointed that the beautiful girls aren’t in tiny bikinis like we see in most shark movies.
It drove me nuts that the girls paddled so slowly when they should have been paddling super fast to get to safety.
Once I saw a leak in my boat, I would have grabbed the bucket immediately and started to bail out the water. Instead, the girls decide to have a long-winded conversation for 5 minutes. Then, magically, the boat stops leaking. Super lame.
The girls talk to someone on a cell phone for some closure at the end of the movie, but then the phone cuts off. Strange choice.
There are some jump scares and suspense but most of the movie is super predictable.
People who should be dead miraculously survive.
There are dumb moments like when some of the girls warn the others who are in the water to come back to the safety of the kayaks because they think they saw a shark, so the girls just stay in the water for a long time instead.
You would think that girls who had many years of experience spearfishing would already have an emergency plan for if/when they ever saw a shark.