The Reef (2010)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Ken S

  
  Remember Open Water? It's like, but it's not terrible.

• J P

  
  I liked this movie, except for the ending. It ended so abruptly, I was like "Is that it?" It was really disappointing. It was almost like the director didn't know where the movie should end, so he just.....ended it. I was really unsatisfied. I was hoping to see a lot… More
  I liked this movie, except for the ending. It ended so abruptly, I was like "Is that it?" It was really disappointing. It was almost like the director didn't know where the movie should end, so he just.....ended it. I was really unsatisfied. I was hoping to see a lot more than what I did. It amazingly was able to keep my interest the whole 90 minutes, but when I was expecting a climax of some sort, the movie let me down. They get picked off one by one (and it's pretty predictable about which people go when) until there's a couple left then something not so shocking happens and it ends. Then before the credits the movie tells you what happens afterwards like a documentary or whatever. Like, they can't or don't feel like showing us what happens, so they just tell us in words on the screen what became of everyone. There were some good intense moments with the shark, but I really didn't get to see enough of it. It was mostly just water...lots of water. There wasn't enough gore either. After a shark attack there should be lots of blood, but there was not a lot of blood shown. The closest gore this movie got to was a half eaten sea turtle and that's it. (may contain spoilers) The other thing I didn't like about this film was the fact that the guy that decided to stay behind on the (possibly) sinking yacht was ignored. It focused on the 4 individuals that decided to swim to shore, then went back to the guy on the yacht, and then it shifted to the swimmers again but never went back to the yacht. So we didn't get to see how he made out. They focused back on the yacht once to show the sharks swimming around, which was kind of unnecessary because we all knew what the swimmers were going to encounter; there's no need to foreshadow it. Since they focused on the yacht once, they should've kept going back to it, so we could've seen what that guy had to go through. That way we wouldn't get bored looking at the same people in the same ocean just swimming around. That part just annoyed me a little bit. I thought they'd come back around and check in on the yacht every once in a while, but nope guess not. Was the yacht really sinking? Did it ever sink? Did the sharks get the guy on the yacht? A bunch of questions were still unanswered by the end of the film. I was hoping to know a lot more than I did. The whole movie ended as a mystery like "I guess we'll never know" sort of thing, and I didn't like that very much. Some of the parts with the shark like I said were really suspenseful and good, but the ending really sucked thus ruining the entire movie for me. :(

• Dean !

  
  From the same director as Black Water about a Alligator menacing a group of stranded people in the outback. We have this survival thriller about a group of friends whose boat is capsized and after some decide to swim encounter a great white shark. Apparently based on true events...… More
  From the same director as Black Water about a Alligator menacing a group of stranded people in the outback. We have this survival thriller about a group of friends whose boat is capsized and after some decide to swim encounter a great white shark. Apparently based on true events... It does feel very similar to both Open water and Adrift but has a bit more action I felt. Definitely not as slowly paced as Open water. Given the subject matter, this is about as good as this type of film can get. It won't be for everyone.

• Manu G

  
  Even though this movie for me was entertaining and I liked it there was nothing special about it or even remotely good about this film. The plot is simple and easy to follow thus bad acting though and many details uncleared. Watch it if you don't have anything else better to do.… More
  Even though this movie for me was entertaining and I liked it there was nothing special about it or even remotely good about this film. The plot is simple and easy to follow thus bad acting though and many details uncleared. Watch it if you don't have anything else better to do. Luke welcomes his friend Matt and his girlfriend Suzie that come from London and Matt's sister and Luke's former girlfriend Kate that comes from Sydney to sail with him and the sailor Warren in a sailboat. However, the vessel hits an underwater rock and capsizes with an opening on her bottom. Luke advises that they should swim in the north direction to reach the Turtle Island, in Queensland, Australia, while they have strength since there is a current moving the boat in the opposite direction of land but Warren prefers to stay on the hull waiting for help since there are sharks in the water. The quartet swims, but they are hunted by a great white shark.

• Brian D

  
  Good movie but its alot like Open Water.If you didn't like that movie you will probably not like this either.

• Eric H

  
  Australia has given us some of the best man vs nature films, think of the giant croc in "Dark Age", the giant wild boar in "Razorback", and nature itself as a primal force in movies like "Long Weekend" and "Picnic at Hanging Rock". What these… More
  Australia has given us some of the best man vs nature films, think of the giant croc in "Dark Age", the giant wild boar in "Razorback", and nature itself as a primal force in movies like "Long Weekend" and "Picnic at Hanging Rock". What these movies have in common is that whether the villain is a physical creature or a malevolent force, it's a definable character. That's what this movie lacks. In "Jaws" the shark is the leading man, here it's a bit-part player. In fact it's so badly defined that it was only about three quarters of the way through the movie that I realised it was a lone shark and not just a random bunch of maneaters. When you make a monster movie there are two ways to deal with it. You can hold back the monster ala "Jaws" or if you're confident enough about your creature you can shove it in our faces ala "The Thing". Here the film-makers have neither the sense to adopt the former approach nor the talent to pull off the latter. If you're expecting a trashy SyFy original six-pack flick, this isn't the monster movie for you. Apparently this is based on a true story and Andrew Traucki takes a po-faced approach to the material. It's a choice that his cast unfortunately just aren't strong enough to deal with. As family and friends are being dispatched none of the characters ever seem too upset and one scene where a brother/boyfriend is eaten is followed by a scene where the survivors laugh and shout joyously at the sight of land. I don't know about you but if I get eaten by a shark I'd like my friends and family to at least feel glum for a couple of days. So the humans aren't much cop here and neither is the shark. The footage is frankly pathetic, rendering it as threatening as a guppy. When we see it on screen it just looks too small, they should have hired a midget swimmer because we never get to see it in the same shot as the cast. When you're treading the same ground, or water, as a movie as good as "Jaws", you better come out all guns blazing. Traucki and co are just shooting blanks.

• Ryan M

  
  6.0/10 I'm not going to compare "The Reef" to "Jaws". There are too many killer shark movies; some bad, some good, and it would be inappropriate to compare any of them to that riveting masterpiece of tension. However, would it be fine to compare the… More
  6.0/10 I'm not going to compare "The Reef" to "Jaws". There are too many killer shark movies; some bad, some good, and it would be inappropriate to compare any of them to that riveting masterpiece of tension. However, would it be fine to compare the film to the killer shark movies that followed? Sure. I think I'll compare "The Reef" to "Open Water". They are both very similar films about unlikely people who are in a sticky situation; stranded in the middle of a shark infested ocean, constatnyl looking for land and/or help in every direction, but getting no response or safe haven in return. It's a rather depressing but riveting subject for a movie, but often times, it works. At least in "Open Water" it did. That's a very good flick that you need to catch if you haven't already. Seeing it would do you more good than seeing this derivative if not somewhat involving potboiler; which is a pretty well-made potboiler if one at all, but a potboiler nonetheless. I think the reason behind why some shark movies are good and others are not rests in the fact that with each film, the points are all plotted and the filmmakers know where they want to take the premise. However, sometimes they decide to take little deteurs and embed their own style into the product; in an attempt to make it a quality picture. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Unfortunately for "The Reef", the film finds itself smack-dab in the middle of things. It's not bad, it's not even mediocre, and it finds itself on the better side of decency; but what it lacks is riveting drama and an introduction to anything new. It uses old techniques, presents them in suitably old ways, and still manages to entertain. This is admirable, because this is an admirable and well-made film. I just wish it could have tried to be something more. This is the kind of movie that opens by introducing us to characters who are pretty much characterless on sight. That's never good. What I mean by this is basically: just by staring into their eyes, at their hair, bodies, and into their personalities, we can tell whether we're actually going to care about them or not. My personal opinion on this can be said with a single word: nope! I would have been fine with these "characterless characters", and for a while, I was. As long as the film played its cards right, I was willing to like it. And again, for a while, I was. The set-up: our heroes and heroines take a boat trip to a beautiful reef, go diving for a bit, and then (gasp) the boat capsizes. This leaves them stranded, alone, and without much help on their side. There are no islands - little or big - in sight. How unfortunate. They decide to swim outwards a ways instead of just waiting around for something to happen, and this is precisely the moment in which they meet the villain; the killer sharks. And oh, do they kill! The film makes a smart move by supplying us with plenty of shark attack scenes, and I liked how the most graphic of graphic details weren't shown. This is always a good approach, since it makes the horror a whole lot more genuine; as does the nearly no-name cast of the film. I had no problem with the methods that the film used when it came to trying to scare and thrill the audience, I just had a slight issue with the attitude present in the delivery. "The Reef" doesn't even attempt to put its own spin on the concept of being in the middle of a large body of water and surrounded by sharks. It IS that movie; and that movie only. The downsides are basically that it lacks substance, REAL human drama, or definitive horror; while the upsides are that it has some beautiful cinematography (something that most low-budget killer shark movies certainly lack), some engaging underwater sequences, solid performances (attached to genuinely boring characters), and a sense of direction that might get the people involved somewhere in their respective careers. I suspect plenty of love and attention went into making this film, and in some parts, it shows. I guess those involved expect us to lower our expectations a bit so that we can enjoy the film; and maybe that's what you should do if my review, which I hope feels like it praises more than it criticizes, arouses your interest in the film. But when it comes down to distinguishing the shark from the movie, "The Reef" only just barely gets both the shark...and some of the movie. Perhaps the shark is a given.

• Sam E

  
  Just because it's a tragic story doesn't mean the movie has to suffer... The Reef is a low-budget, slow-paced film that unfortunately shies away from any sort of gore. Furthermore, The Reef fails to show the shark in any form other than a gentle glide quite a distance away.… More
  Just because it's a tragic story doesn't mean the movie has to suffer... The Reef is a low-budget, slow-paced film that unfortunately shies away from any sort of gore. Furthermore, The Reef fails to show the shark in any form other than a gentle glide quite a distance away. Finally, the viewer must ask him/herself the main reason why they watch shark movies -> TO SEE THE HAUNTING TEETH lining the humongous mouth, a major aspect The Reef ignores. If you want to see a good shark thriller, stick with Jaws.

• Daniel P

  
  Standard stuck-in-shark-infested-waters thriller, that cheekily uses the "based on true events" title at the beginning but then in the end credits admits "this is a work of fiction, any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely… More
  Standard stuck-in-shark-infested-waters thriller, that cheekily uses the "based on true events" title at the beginning but then in the end credits admits "this is a work of fiction, any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental...". The acting is nothing to write home about, the direction is solid and sometimes inventive, the shark attacks are fairly convincing, the story is utterly predictable and unoriginal. <i>Open Water</i> did this much better on a smaller budget and with more interesting characters, better acting and better writing.

• Daisy M

  
  The Reef fell in the category of the Jaws movies, but it did not have many similarities to Jaws but many to Open Water, so if you liked that one, you would definitely like The Reef. The story was an easy one to follow, a boat capsized and started to sink, and the group of people on… More
  The Reef fell in the category of the Jaws movies, but it did not have many similarities to Jaws but many to Open Water, so if you liked that one, you would definitely like The Reef. The story was an easy one to follow, a boat capsized and started to sink, and the group of people on the boat decided to swim for an island. What made The Reef stand out from Open Water, there was much more shark time, and you actually got to see the shark in good angles And somehow you started to cheer on when you see the shark, because the movie was constantly building up suspense and thrills, and you just want these to end. And I must say there were some nice peaks to these thrills, trust me. Well, I won't ruin anything and say what it was, but I liked it because it showed human nature caught in a hopeless situation. The dialogue was pretty good and the actors portrayed their characters very well in a very believable manner.

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