- Director: Kiah Roache-Turner
- Writer: Kiah Roache-Turner
- Stars: Mark Coles Smith, Joel Nankervis, Sam Delich, Lee Tiger Halley, Sam Parsonson, Maximillian Johnson
REVIEW
Since Sharknado and its inexplicable popularity, it seems that Shark films have been more ultra-low budget, prolific and treated as a joke. There have been a few outliers of course but they are few and far between. Enter Beast Of War – a serious, stylised and undeniably good killer shark film.
We join a company of around two hundred Australian soldiers, preparing to be shipped out to fight battles overseas during World War 2. We meet a few select soldiers Leo (Smith), Will (Nankervis), Des (Delich) and Stan (Johnson) as they are put through their paces in a pre-deployment camp. Whilst fighting for the same country, there are a few inner squabbles in the company, generally and unsurprisingly driven by racism, as Leo is an Aboriginal. After the camp, the company is travelling on a ship across the Timor Sea when they are attack and sunk by the Japanese. The handful of survivors have to deal with being stranded in the ocean with no chance of a swift rescue…oh, and a marauding, massive Great White shark is hunting them down and trying to pick them off, one by one.
Roache-Turner has created a tense and stylistic film, borrowing from both war films and shark films and melding them together and for a unique experience. It isn’t realistic (the ocean is far too calm) but it certainly takes the shark threat in the film very seriously. At times (and especially early-on) the film seems it could be a riff of on any number of rag-tag military types you’d see in an action-adventure film…if you didn’t know there was a killer shark in the film. Roache-Turner squeezes everything he can from the situation from the sea fog that gives the film an uncanny feel to a broken air-raid siren that sounds like a wailing ghost, it all works together deliciously. All the while not being afraid to spill some blood and show you this in all its glory. Mark Wareham the Cinematographer for the film, cleverly uses lighting that bounces of the characters, silhouetting them in the reds and yellows, with the colours reflecting off the water giving a threatening hue to the blackness they are floating on.
The performances are great, everyone playing their roles perfectly. Mark Coles Smith in particular gives Leo that good guy persona, someone who is fair but also confident in what he can do and his relationship to the monster swimming beneath them, helps ground his knowledge about the shark. But it is the group of survivors that really helps the film. Everyone is really natural with plenty of Australian slang thrown in for good measure.
Roache-Turner has turned in a nicely paced film, that just hits the right mark, time and time again. Knowing when to rachet up the tension and then let it off with a moment of levity. Of course, Jaws has its influence on this film (I mean, it’s a killer shark film – how could it not?) but Roache-Turner isn’t happy to ape that film but just take select elements and turn them into something of his own. Beast Of War is so damn entertaining, thrilling, and well-made.
In Cinemas and On Digital October 10
Ryan Morrissey-Smith
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