★
Jo-Anne Brechin’s aquatic creature feature traps two friends on a rock with a vengeful captive orca and then runs out of ideas almost immediately.
Maddie’s (Virginia Gardner) boyfriend Chad (Isaac Crawley) visits her at her small town dinner night shift to give her an orca necklace (the film’s symbolism is not subtle). When an armed robber arrives, Chad wrestles with the attacker and then chases him into the car park where he drops his spoils and runs off. But when Chad retrieves the necklace he just has time to turn and smile winsomely at Maddie (eyes lock, hearts melt) in his hero moment.., when he is suddenly run over by the escaping robber and killed. This is easily the highlight of the film. It is played with complete sincerity, which somehow makes it worse.
Since time later, Maddie and her best friend Trish (Mel Jarnson), fetch up at a Thai lagoon for a restorative break. Maddie is grieving for her situationally unaware paramour. Trish is a PhD student and social media influencer, because sure, why not. A captive orca named Ceto, traumatised by years of theme park abuse, has plans for both of them.
The setup has a modicum of promise. Ceto’s captivity backstory gestures at something meatier than pure splatter, and the central survival situation (two women stranded on a rock, circled by an intelligent and vengeful predator) has genuine potential. The Shallows proved the formula can work. So did Jaws, fifty years ago. Killer Whale has seen both films and learned nothing from either.
The problems are overwhelming and arrive quickly. The green screen is distractingly poor, undermining every scene in which the characters are supposed to be in actual water near an actual whale. The orca itself is passably well rendered but deployed so uninterestingly that any menace it generates has long since dissipated by the time a bewildering third-act interpersonal twist arrives to finish off what remained of the tension. The female characters are written and shot with a kind of attention that has nothing to do with storytelling. Gardner works hard with thin material, but the film does not return the favour.
At 89 minutes, Killer Whale should be lean. It is not. It is a film that mistakes wheel-spinning for atmosphere and contrivance for drama, dragging its two leads from one waterlogged rock to the next while the audience scans ahead for the finish. As damp as the cast was, I could sense as the well of imagination ran dry – and I myself let out a Killer Wail when I noticed there was still another forty minutes left to go.
If you hate someone, let them know Killer Whale is available on digital, now