The Reef Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

The Reef Blu-ray Movie Review

One more reason to never go in the ocean ever again.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 29, 2011

Every subsequent shark attack film has to deal--somehow--with the challenge of escaping the looming underwater shadow of Jaws, the gaping-mawed great granddaddy of them all. Deep Blue Sea differentiated itself by going for a sci-fi angle, with a submerged research facility and genetically modified killer makos. 2003’s Open Water, shot on off-the-shelf DV cameras, took the vérité route, with a distressingly realistic portrayal that feels, at times, like an improbable documentary. And then there are the films like Shark Attack 3: Megalodon and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, which throw realism overboard in favor of prehistoric predators leaping out of the water to take down airplanes or bite a chunk out of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was curious, then, to see how Black Water director Andrew Traucki’s latest creature feature, The Reef, would try to distance itself from Steven Spielberg’s iconic Amity Island monster movie. Traucki’s approach is to pare down the shark attack film to its basics. There’s no Moby Dick-style hunt, no real backstory, no extraneous drama or character development. Here’s what the film does have: a big, scary-ass shark, a terrified group of floating castaways, and an endless expanse of ocean. What more do you need?

As it turns out, you need a bit more, but we’ll get to that in a second. This is a film about the sheer man vs. nature fight for survival--nature, naturally, survives best--and it wastes no time in getting straight to the core disaster scenario. Luke (Damien Walshe-Howling) seems to have the best job in the world. He makes a living delivering yachts across the globe, and for his latest jaunt--from Australia to Indonesia--he’s invited his best friend Matt (Gyton Grantley), who brings along his girlfriend, Suzie (Adrienne Pickering), and his sister, Kate (Zoe Naylor). Luke and Kate clearly have a history together--we learn she once helped him crew a yacht to the Mediterranean--and there’s blood-thick sexual tension between the two from the get-go. As a present, she brings him a giant phallic sausage, which is funny until you realize the real symbolic foreshadowing--to a shark, humans are nothing more than encased meat.

There are other hints of what’s to come. In a boating shop at the marina, the store owner catches Kate looking at a wall of mounted shark jaws and tells her, “You’re more likely to die from a bee sting than get killed by a shark.” Not in this movie, buddy. Along with shaggy-haired Warren (Kieran Darcy-Smith), Luke’s latest crewman, the two couples set off for a deserted island paradise, where they snorkel and frolic and give each other sexy looks. The next morning, however, while traveling through a reef, their yacht capsizes, leaving them stranded atop its overturned hull. They have a decision to make--do they sit and hope for rescue while the boat drifts in the current and slowly sinks? Or, do they brave the 10-mile swim to the nearest island?

This is very much a “What would you do?” sort of film, and there are several junctures where you might feel inclined to yell at the characters on screen. (Don’t go after the errant flotation device! Don’t investigate the mysteriously unmoving sea turtle! And, for the love of life--literally--stop splashing!) The group eventually splits. Warren, feeling cowardly, decides to stay with the ship, while the others paddle off into the blue unknown on boogie boards and wearing wet suits, knowing full well they look like seals from below. And you know the rest. Clearly, this isn’t going to go well, and not everyone--if anyone--is going to make it. The situation is not unlike the set-up of Open Water, a movie that was ruined for me by the overly chatty dialogue and cringe-worthy acting. Traucki avoids those two particular pitfalls well; his script is the very definition of economic, and the actors are suitably believable, terrified--most of the time--into speechlessness.

The director gets a lot right. There are moments of unsettling eeriness, like when Luke explores the semi-submerged cabin of the upside down yacht, with dish towels floating ominously in the dark water and strange knocking sounds coming from outside the hull. And there are sequences of almost sublime tension, where you’ll be gnawing on your knuckles waiting to see what happens next. Traucki handles the attack scenes brilliantly; instead of opting for mechanical or CGI sharks, he filmed real Great Whites off the coast of South Australia and composited the actors fairly seamlessly into the footage. The image of a large shark drifting out of the deep blue darkness is a visceral one--a palpable reminder that humans, out of their element, aren’t quite at the top of the food chain.

Like sharks themselves, The Reef is streamlined and single-minded. It doesn’t muck around with subtext. It has no need for developed relationships or a story beyond “stranded swimmers, hunted down one after another.” At a lean 88 minutes, it’s a svelte, highly evolved piece of genre filmmaking that wants to ruin your next beachside vacation--and Australia’s tourism industry--with nightmares about what lurks beneath the waves. But that’s about it. Traucki gives us lingering dread and sudden scares, but what he doesn’t deliver is a reason to invest in the characters or their fates. Luke and Kate’s history is given only a cursory treatment, and we know next to nothing about Matt and Suzie, who, let’s face it, are merely shark fodder. The film is good at what it does--namely, hand-wringing terror--but ultimately, it feels insubstantial, more of a cinematic snack than a meaty, survival thriller meal.

The Reef Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Reef washes up on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's better than merely acceptable but a few steps shy of great. Imdb.com states that The Reef was shot on 35mm, and you can definitely see film cameras in the "making of" featurette, but it also looks to me like some digital footage has been mixed in as well, mostly in the underwater scenes. Some shots show clear evidence of film grain, especially in the first act, but others seem to have been either shot on video or given a light DNR filtering--it's sometimes hard to tell. Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter. The movie looks good, regardless of the source material, and besides, this isn't a film where visual fidelity is a prime concern. You could watch The Reef on a twice-duped VHS tape and it'd still be terrifying. I'd also advise against trying to read too much into the quality of the screenshots. Since the camera and the actors are almost always moving, many of the screenshots look softer and more smeary than the film actually is when in motion. Through there are a few sequences that are legitimately soft, clarity is generally strong, displaying the fine detail of the actors' faces and even the neoprene texture of their wetsuits. There are some slight color issues--most notably, a few instances where the tonality switches suddenly between shots--but nothing overly distracting. Blues are deep, black levels are dense, and contrast is solid. Finally, aside from some light noise, there are no compression-related concerns. It may not be demo material, but The Reef definitely looks better than it would ever need to look to scare you senseless.

The Reef Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Imagine the sounds you'd be likely to hear if you were stranded out in the middle of the ocean with your capsized shipmates; the quiet lapping of waves, the hush of wind, the gurgling of bubbles when you peek underwater to check for danger, the sudden thrashing of a surfacing shark, the terrified screams of your friends. That pretty much sums up The Reef's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which brings the suspense and horror of the situation to life with frequent--and effective--usage of the surround channels. Overall, this is a very quiet film, but the mix uses environmental sound design to generate a lot of tension, like the scene where Luke is inside the capsized cabin, looking for supplies, and hears a strange pounding noise from outside the hull. The ambience is punctuated by Rafael May's throbbing, bass-heavy score, which wisely avoids any direct John Williams comparisons. In total, the mix sounds wonderful, with punchy dynamics during the big jump scares and generally realistic foley sounds. Dialogue is almost always clean and balanced and comprehensible. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles in easy-too-read lettering.

The Reef Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Shooting with Sharks - The "Making Of" (SD, 23:55): A typical production documentary, featuring interviews with the director and stars, and lots of footage from the film's aquatic on-location shoot.
• Trailer (SD, 2:08)

The Reef Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Reef is an efficient monster movie that has some great scares and a few moments of nigh unbearable suspense, but it's also a bit too streamlined for its own good. Still, my thoughts about shark movies in general align with my philosophy of zombie films--even the merely mediocre ones are usually fun to watch in the moment, even if they don't leave you with much to chew on later. If Shark Week is your favorite stretch of basic cable summer programming, you'll probably have a blast with The Reef.