The Reef: Stalked

A group of friends go into the water, and encounter a white shark.

Not the most original plot it's fair to say, however there are a couple of shark movies that make the grade, because they offer something original, something a little different, sadly this is not one of them, it is instantly forgettable, with nothing of any particular note happening. It's another of those movies that does nothing to promote the wonder of sharks, just plays into an outdated idea of them being man eating monsters from The Sea.

There are a few moments of suspense, I'll give it that, a couple of scenes where you don't quite know what's going to happen, or where the shark is, so I'll applaud them for that, I'll also say I quite liked the music in parts too, it wasn't overdone.

The major problems though, first off, the acting, it wasn't particularly good, and secondly the shark itself, I'm not a shark expert by any means, but this one, was behaving in a very strange way, I'm not sure they behave in such a way, I could be wrong.

It's not often you watch a film like this and root for the shark, however on this occasion, I did.

4/10.

Let's start off by saying that I loved the reef and I was looking forward to this one as soon as they announced it but after watching it, it was horrible. How can they do the first one so good graphics wise but in this one they tried using cheap cgi. They should have stuck with how they done the first one because it was phenomenal.

I am a huge fan of "shark" movies and honestly in the last 5 years or so there was surprisingly many good movies with this theme. My top is definitely "Shallow" and very good one was "47 Meters Down".

This one has many flaws in very basic aspects in this genre.

What do you need? You need good CGi, you need good acting and most importantly you need great directing so it would feel realistic.

1. CGi is 50/50 , you have real sharks (or at least it looks like it) but the problem is it looks like a documentary movie, which is not a good sign. And then you have bad very unrealistic scenes with shark. So most of the time it doesn't fit the movie

2. Memorable scenes, you will not find a single one. And that is bad. You will see 10x the same scene with a fin on the surface, you will see lots of bubbles and splashes and you will see few times something under the surface (should be shark) that looks like someone draw it with a marker.

3. Victims and story. Sometimes filmmakers have tendency to forget what genre they are filming. This seems that case. This really feels like a drama with her personal trauma set in the water where by a chance is THE shark. It should be other way around. Another thing is, don't try to force some pathetic story to "catastrophic" movie. There is no need. This should be about surviving, not about trying to overcome your fears of diving. On top of that when you lost someone, it is more than obvious they will not make a movie you will loose someone else. So after 10 min you know who will survive and who will not.

It's not hard to have a right vision for this kind of movies, but why filmmakers are trying to do something "more" is beyond me?!

Overall this is slightly below average movie. There is really no need to watch this because you will be disappointed and after 40mins you will check how many more minutes it will take to end this "journey"

The Reef: Stalked (2022) is a standard bad movie. This movie is slow in the first 10 to 20 minutes, and it takes its time to get to the shark attacks.

The characters are standard, and when you see a backstory for one of the characters it does not give much for you to get behind them. I mostly did not care enough about them surviving the shark attacks.

The shark had a stock footage feel to it and when it attacks, I cannot see what is happening. The shark takes its time when attacking the characters, and it does things I do not believe it would do.

The shark attack scenes have a lot of shaky cam bubbles covering up what is happening, and the movie has an ending that I thought was average and slow paced.

I cannot recommend The Reef: Stalked (2022), because this movie is boring at times, and it has false jump scares or jump scares you can see coming.

I'm not a writer nor am I a movie critic, but I do watch helluva a lot more movies, so I'm just going to share how this movie made me feel.

I've never kayaked before, and without having any actual kayaking experience, I would've been a seasoned pro next to the skill set the women in this movie were portrayed as having! I was shocked at how utterly incompetent the characters in this film were made out to be. I found myself yelling things like drop the damned bloody fish, and wtf, turn kayak back over throughout the entire movie! The sheer lack of common sense and any realistic response to the danger of being hunted by a great white shark killed this film for me (no pun intended)! If the women in this film were actual people, they'd have no business being in a kayak, let alone kayaking long stretches of open ocean. Yes, this is just a movie-a movie on how to broadcast loudly to all the sharks in a given area, hey come eat us, we're all an easy meal! Geez!