Synopsis:
When their boat is sunk while crossing the Timor Sea during World War II, a young troop of Australian soldiers must find a way to survive the harsh seas on a quickly shrinking life raft. Hundreds of miles from anywhere, they must confront interpersonal conflicts, enemy attacks, and the advances of one very large, very hungry great white shark. From Kiah Roache-Turner, director of Wyrmwood and Sting, comes this uniquely terrifying tale.
What We Thought:
Beast of War feels like a lot of other movies we’ve seen before. The story of a shark (or sharks) coming after soldiers during war has been well documented and made before as well. This one is from Australia and is about Australian soldiers during World War II so at least that is something different.
The film opens with the viewer meeting some of the soldiers during boot camp. You immediately like some and hate some. Then it jumps into them on the water and being attacked by the Japanese. At first there are only 2 or 3 survivors, but then they discover more. This group needs to survive miles away from anyone, but there’s also a shark out for blood.
The biggest flaw with the movie is the shark itself. Now bad shark movies is a genre I don’t mind at all, but this isn’t that. This is a war drama with a really bad CGI shark. Nothing about the shark looks realistic which takes you out of the realism of the war environment. There are some shark attack scenes that look SyFy bad including one with a soldier losing an arm.
The acting is fine and I’ve seen some of the actors in other movies, but I also watch a lot more and different movies than the average person. I’ve seen the director’s previous films Wyrmwood and Sting which I think are both much better than this.
Those looking for a World War II drama will probably be disappointed in Beast of War. Those looking for a horror shark flick will be too. If the shark looked better the film would have worked better because the acting isn’t bad. Despite the story being something we’ve seen or at least heard of before it could have still worked. I wanted to like it, but it just doesn’t get there.
The Nerds Templar 