Review: KILLER WHALE is a Titanic Failure of the Aquatic-Horror Subgenre

After spending the last few years complaining about awful shark-centric horror movies, it’s a breath of fresh air to critique a less spotlighted breed of fin flick. Killer Whale brings orcas back to villainy since, well, 1977’s Orca. Director and co-writer Jo-Anne Brechin adapts the dark, anti-animal secrets that plague Sea World into an aquatic creature feature that sorely misses almost every mark of the subgenre. It’s like The Shallows except geographically incoherent, drowning in lazy digital effects, and exhaustingly uneventful as two bikini babes test their friendship while Shamu’s vengeful relative swims out of frame.

Virginia Gardner stars as Maddie, cast in her second ridiculous survival thriller after scaling The Fall’s decommissioned TV tower. This time, her character finds herself trapped in a remote Thailand lagoon while vacationing on her bestie Trish’s (Mel Jarnson) dime. You see, Trish is an aspiring scientist slash social media celebrity—and Maddie is still reeling from watching her crush Chad (Isaac Crawley) die in front of her eyes (where a shotgun blast robs her hearing). Trish whisks Maddie away to an exotic island resort, but she has an ulterior motive: introduce Maddie to her and Chad’s favorite orca, Ceto. Too bad Ceto’s been murdering janitors, so she’s released into the sea … just in time to hunt Maddie and Trish where no bartender can hear their screams.

Brechin and co-scribe Katharine McPhee inefficiently smash The Shallows and The Fall together, shaping a screenplay that’s overcommitted to relationship drama. Gardner and Jarnson soak in postcard landscapes while floating on pizza-slice inflatables and watersport vehicles, but then find themselves stranded on a single rock in the center of a rocky lagoon (Ceto “dangerously” circles). Cinematographer Shing-Fung Cheung shoots the two girls as they scheme ways to scavenge lunch or drink plastic bag “sweat,” but there’s really not much for the photographer to do. I’d reckon about 90% of Killer Whale is animated in post-production, which gives everything the fakest, filmmed-in-a-studio-water-tank finish.

A microbudget production like Molli and Max in the Future that exclusively uses The Volume’s LED technology puts Killer Whale to shame. Gardner and Jamson stand against oceanic nothingness like humans stuck in an unfinished virtual reality. The film so mightily fails to blend its actors into greenscreen backgrounds, as if SFX artists lost their Adobe Premiere Pro subscriptions mid-polish. Killer Whale gives bottom-feeding titles like The Requin a run for their money, competing to see whose digital effects ruin the mood faster. Brechin blows all the production value on an opening poolside drinks sequence, followed by Maddie and Trish’s illegal entry into “World of Orca,” where Ceto’s initially held captive. Otherwise, Killer Whale is an abysmally inorganic mess of pixelated skies that are the worst of the worst in greenscreen usage—but what do you expect from a movie that won’t even use a practical rig for when Ceto’s dorsal fin breaks surface?

I hate to bring the negativity so thick and so early in the year, but Brechin’s release is a ”What Not To Do” by fin flick standards. Gardner and Jamson are stranded with hokey dialogue that would make a telenovela writer blush, as their characters ham their way through heinous conflicts and worse decisions. All the pretense for Haddie’s trauma, and the mechanical motions that lead to her nightmare, are written as thin as possible to get to the chompy bits. But hey, if the action is exciting, that’s all that matters! Too bad Killer Whale is a bust in the “killer whale” department, as the effects team—ONCE AGAIN—relies on digital renders for blood, Ceto, and even the splashy water itself.

With such a low body count, Brechin paints herself into a corner. Killer Whale exposes itself to higher standards because if you’re not going to slaughter with abandon, other aspects better represent your draw. There are attempts to spark originality: blink-and-you-miss elements that veer batty. Maddie’s hearing loss tries to establish this compelling connection with Ceto’s echolocation, and there’s a scene where she’s playing cello underwater during a fever dream, but these flourishes of creativity amount to little when so much other incompetence floods the screen. The only other notable character outside of the leading ladies is Josh (Mitchell Hope), Mr. Beach Heartthrob, but he’s chum in an instant. For that much dependence on Maddie and Trish’s banter, you should aim higher than matching your nanna’s soaps.

Killer Whale is a Titanic failure of the aquatic-horror subgenre. Brechin creates what’s essentially an example of how to make The Shallows, but wrong. It’s a film that can’t even maintain consistent continuity in the depth of water in parts, which is strange, since there’s not much else to do on set (because the sets are all animated by computers). If you didn’t want to shoot on location, or showcase practical effects, or pay attention to what drives horror fans crazy, why make a movie like this? Sadly, that’s an answer Brechin doesn’t have the cinematic language to express.

Movie Score: 1.5/5