Skip ‘The Requin’ and Rewatch ‘The Shallows’ [Review]
This film had so much potential. You have a beloved actress known for a series of iconic ‘90s films battling a killer shark. How do you screw that up? Well, if your film is called The Requin, the answer is in almost every way possible. The script is derivative, the characters are two-dimensional, and the effects are embarrassingly bad.
After the heartbreak of a late-term miscarriage, Jaelyn (Alicia Silverstone) and her quasi-ginger husband Kyle (James Tupper) take off on a trip to the beaches of Vietnam. What starts as fun in the sun becomes a harrowing and deadly ordeal as their cabin on the water is swept out to sea. Circled by a hungry shark, Kyle and Jaelyn must fight for their survival while they are sized up as a potential snack.
The first stumbling point for me is the film’s melodramatic and sentimental tone. It’s not unusual for a character in a film such as this to be working through some baggage. That approach was remarkably effective in The Shallows. But there has to be a reason for us to stay invested in the character and unfortunately, Jaelyn and Kyle have almost no redeeming qualities. Accordingly, the attempts to humanize them fall flat.
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Silverstone is usually effortlessly likable, so the fact that her character doesn’t learn anything, grow from the ordeal, or even pass as a suitable protagonist is disappointing. She has an inherent charm that is woefully underutilized in The Requin. Instead of coming across like a badass heroine, Jaelyn is neurotic and cries through most of the movie. That’s probably how most people would react to a situation of this magnitude. But a film like this should give us a chance to escape from reality while watching someone dig deep to tap into superhuman strength they didn’t know they possessed. But that doesn’t happen here. In fact, the big showdown at the end almost feels accidental. There’s no digging deep. No tapping into newly found strength. It just falls flat and then it’s over.
Further complicating matters, the audience has to wait more than fifty minutes before a shark even appears on the scene. If one is going for the slow burn approach, one should ensure their film has characters people will enjoy getting to know. But viewers aren’t likely to have that experience with Kyle and Jaelyn.
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Writer/director Le-Van Kiet’s screenplay is responsible for most of the problems I had with the lead characters. If Jaelyn were written as a capable heroine, the film probably could have worked. But she is more of a damsel in distress that never undergoes a final femme transformation. And that doesn’t do much to endear the audience to a character that has little else going for her.
Kyle is even worse. He routinely says and does things that make him impossible to warm up to. The way he tries to push Jaelyn out of her comfort zone to overcome her PTSD makes him impossible for me to invest in. Maybe that would have been OK if Jaelyn were to rise to the occasion. But she never does.
Not surprisingly, the effects showcased in The Requin leave much to be desired. I understand the need to use a CG shark based on budgetary limitations and a number of other factors. But what perplexes me is that nearly everything seems to have been rendered using CG technology. I am 100% sure I saw a school of CGI fish swim by in one of the underwater scenes. Moreover, the whole film is easily identifiable as having been shot in a water tank, next to a green screen, with a couple of cheap set pieces.
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Adding insult to injury, some of the action sequences defy not only common sense but also physics. Perhaps most noteworthy is the scene in which Jaelyn awkwardly floats across the cabin, suspended in slow-motion as their villa violently departs the shore. The trajectory of her movements is awkward and totally unnatural.
I wish this film had undergone a rewrite or three. The premise is promising. But the execution wasn’t there. If you are keen to check it out for yourself, The Requin is now available on VOD.
Summary
The Requin squanders its potential and chokes on missed opportunities.
