Sean Byrne’s gonzo horror thriller premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes film festival, in the sidebar where Cannes traditionally finds a place in its heart for genre or offbeat fare. Yet despite this stamp of authority – and a lead turn from Jai Courtney that could best be described as “gnarly” – I couldn’t get behind this movie, which has a bargain-basement straight-to-streaming feel to it.
The scene is the Australian Gold Coast where surfers come to catch gigantic waves. Hassie Harrison (from TV’s Yellowstone) plays a badass surfer named Zephyr, who travels around in her van as free as the wind sampling the most outrageous swells. She meets-cute with Moses (Josh Heuston), a nerdy guy who is very sweet and yet also kind of hot. When they part, Zephyr is to come fatefully into contact with the film’s horrible villain, a beefy, bullish guy called Tucker, played by Courtney, who has a business taking attractive twentysomething tourists wearing only swimming costumes out on his boat, promising them an intimate encounter with sharks. But the unspeakable Tucker, a great shark enthusiast himself, has some pretty unusual ideas about the food he wants to offer to bring these creatures up to his boat.
