Almost 5 a long time after Jaws made everybody who’s ever gone close to the ocean concern the toothy terrors lurking under the waves, filmmakers are nonetheless hoping to duplicate a few of that shark-tastic magic. There have been some successes through the years, each lavish (like The Meg) and bare-bones (like Open Water). But there have been much more which can be much less memorable, together with the newest: Great White.

That’s to not say Great White—the characteristic debut of director Martin Wilson, from a script by Michael Boughen (Dying Breed)—is horrible. It’s simply form of… shrug. The impeccably, intimidatingly handsome solid, all of whom flip in just-fine performances, is led by 30 Rock’s Katrina Bowden, the only real American amid a bunch of New Zealand and Australian actors; style followers will bear in mind she additionally starred within the extra outrageous fish-themed saga Piranha 3DD, in addition to horror comedy Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. Bowden performs Kaz, a nurse who assists her pilot boyfriend, Charlie (Aaron Jakubenko), together with his constitution enterprise, taking vacationers on brief flights round their tropical residence base. Benny (Love and Monsters’ Te Kohe Tuhaka) is their prepare dinner and assistant. Then there’s Michelle (Kimie Tsukakoshi) and Joji (Tim Kano), the prosperous couple who e-book a last-minute flight in order that Michelle can scatter her grandfather’s ashes on the abandoned island the place he was briefly marooned a long time prior—a picturesque spot referred to as “Hell’s Reef.”

Between Michelle’s somber mission, the awkward pressure that types when uptight Joji thinks Benny is ogling his spouse, and a prologue that reveals us one other impossibly photogenic couple being wolfed by you-know-which form of lethal sea predator, the temper is quickly tuned to “imminent disaster,” and Great White doesn’t take lengthy to get there. After the group discovers a shark-attack sufferer’s physique (or half his physique, slightly), they take a facet journey to examine on an overturned boat which, in fact, results in hassle for them.

With all of the lengthy stretches of simply, like, floating round, you’d suppose Great White would take extra time to flesh out its characters, however it doesn’t actually; as an alternative, we get little blips which can be seemingly supposed to lift the stakes and/or give individuals a bit extra depth. Stuff like: Kaz has simply discovered she’s pregnant, Charlie has PTSD after surviving a shark assault a number of years in the past, perhaps they’re going to get married after that is throughout. (Again… shrug.) The most fascinating character is Joji, a controlling, jealous asshole whose villainy eclipses even the sharks for a quick interval, and who will get to attract on his personal paper-thin characterization (he’s an “investment analyst”) to ship the road “I’d rate our chances of surviving at less than 5%… and that would be fucking optimistic.”

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Honestly, I was rooting for Joji to survive over anyone else—what a twist that would be!—but after a while, I decided I was Team Shark, even if it made zero sense that they didn’t just immediately chomp through the life raft and enjoy a tasty human buffet. But then the movie would be over almost instantly, and we’d be denied the opportunity to question why none of the castaways complains of hunger or thirst (it does rain a couple of times)—as well as a few admittedly cool shots showing the tiny raft from high above, with the dark shadows of sharks circling ever closer.

At any rate, as any viewer with a pulse will have realized from the very start of the movie, some of the flawless faces that populate Great White will not make it to the end. You can probably even guess which ones. And while some of the deaths occur in distressingly murky darkness, we do get one particularly dramatic demise that feels like someone took direct inspiration from Shark Week. We also get a moment that made me wonder if a real person—not a movie character—would actually deploy the lung power to let out a scream underwater when something scary happens?

Without giving the ending away, I will say it goes to a surprisingly bleak place, leaving the survivors stuck in a scenario almost as fucked up as “floating on a leaky raft in shark-infested waters”—however then fails to discover its implications, slightly leaving the viewers to marvel precisely what we’re speculated to make of it. Guess they made it residence in some unspecified time in the future… or not. Shrug?

Great White hits Shudder on November 11.

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