Something in the Water

Well, this was a perfectly okay movie. I’ve seen better survival thrillers and I’ve seen worse. Something in the Water out here offering you mediocre quality lesbian representation in shark movies.

Meg and Kayla begin the film by being the victims of a homophobic assault. A year later, they’re broken up and distant. But their mutual friend, Lizzie is getting married. Lizzie invites both Meg and Kayla to a bachelorette-style vacation somewhere warm and shark infested. Along with two other friends named Ruth and Cam, the squad spends a day out on a boat. The rest of the girls initially “strand” Meg and Kayla on a small island so they can make up. This isn’t the problem. The problem is that a shark attacks Ruth. And in trying to escape, their boat hits a reef and quickly sinks. Now the five women are in open shark-infested water and one of them already has a bad shark bite.

Queerness doesn’t play a particularly large role in Something in the Water. It’s not like the sharks are homophobic. The film opens with a homophobic attack and the subsequent distance of Meg and Kayla provides some early structure. But once the survival element kicks in, who really cares if these women are queer or not? Drowning looks the same on everyone. None of this is a critique. Something in the Water is a movie where sexuality becomes irreverent to the current conflict. Before that happens though, I appreciate the movie going out of its way to include queer lead characters and a cast of all women.

The survival thriller element of the movie is okay. It certainly doesn’t look like a good time to tread water in the ocean while one of your friends bleeds out. I’ve seen survival thrillers that have been more gripping, and those that have been less. The problem is the shark stuff. The shark stuff is obviously the most interesting, but always comes off slightly ridiculous. Shark-related conflict is already so dramatic and unlikely that it probably works best if the rest of the movie is like that too. Something in the Water is a little too realistic and minimal most of the time. So when a shark happens, it feels like a jarring change of pace.

As much as I said I don’t think the sharks are homophobic, I do gotta wonder why at least one shark decided to fuck up these particular women’s shit so bad. It seems unlikely as far as shark behaviour goes. And that’s okay! But that being the case, the rest of the movie should’ve risen to meet that level of unlikely but entertaining peril. Mostly, it failed to do this. But I can’t say it was entirely ineffective as a basic survival thriller. And I do appreciate having a sapphic shark movie, especially one that isn’t overtly awful.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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