Jessie (Nicky Whelan) and Harlan (Trace Adkins) assess their prey One victim loses his head, another a leg, hauling himself lopsidedly up the beach. No one is stalked and played with here just grabbed and torn apart, then tossed aside, the warm waters off Hawaii filling up with blood. For most of its victims, death comes quickly. Like the killer in The Reef: Stalked this Great White is propelled by an almost human wickedness rather than hunger or instinct though while The Reef‘s shark draws out the process as its victims hang in the water, frozen with fear, Maneater‘s maneater wastes no time in getting down to business. It’s Harlan who realises this shark is not acting like sharks should, killing for fun rather than survival. Meanwhile sports fisherman Harlan (Adkins) is chugging out to sea aiming to kill the great white that ate half his daughter. They’re taking an overnight booze cruise run by Captain Wally (Ed Morrone), far more knowledgable than his joke persona would suggest, and his wife Beth (Kim DeLonghi), but a stay on a beautiful, deserted island ends in disaster: a giant killer shark finds them, dispatching victim after victim with determination, if not panache. Jessie (Nicky Whelan), newly separated from her fiancé, is on holiday in Hawaii with friends Sunny (Porscha Coleman), Breanna (Kelly Lynn Reiter), Emma (Zoe Cipres), Ty (Alex Farnham) and Will (Shane West).
Maneater movie movie#
(Though admittedly one thing movie sharks don’t need is “more teeth”.) Sadly though Maneater‘s writer-director Justin Lee goes for cliché over creativity nearly every time.
That lack of firm evidence should be a gift to filmmakers: they can turn these creatures into an easy mirror for our own worst character traits, and have a perfect opportunity to fill in the blanks, making them more dangerous, more interesting and more human like Henry Wu plugging the gaps in dinosaur DNA to improve his theme park creations. Maneater is not a good film - with limited, repetitive shark footage and often lazy writing, referencing cleverer, less derivative movies - but there’s a good turn from Trace Adkins as hoary old sea dog Harlan, some brief but sharp characterisation (before the beautiful people get eaten), and an interesting schoolroom scene that goes into how little we actually know about Great Whites. I love a good shark film, and even a bad one, particularly at this time of year when stories of killer beasts patrolling the warm waters of various exotic tourist destinations are a great antidote to frenemies posting their idyllic far-flung getaways on social media, their perfect sprogs contrasting nicely with my own monosyllabic tweens (who literally grunted when I excitedly told them about the shark that bit a woman off Cornwall this summer). Still if you are unfortunate enough to get eaten, at least it’ll put an end to that Hall & Oates earworm you’re currently humming. You wait ages, consoling yourself with giant crocodiles, reconstituted dinosaurs and blue hedgehogs, and then three come along in succession: last summer’s Great White, The Reef: Stalked, and now Maneater.
A young woman and her friends enjoying a boat trip off Hawaii are attacked by a vicious Great White, that seems to be hunting for fun rather than to survive.
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