The Reef

Image credit: IMDb

After breaking up our routine of Friday night shark movies with a little bit of mystery and classic literature adaptations, last Friday night we went right back to toothy monsters of the big blue. Our chosen shark movie this week was The Reef.

A group of friends are travelling along the Great Barrier Reef and having a lovely time exploring little islands, snorkeling, and marveling at the beauty of the underwater world. But their relaxing and romantic trip takes a turn when their boat capsizes and they are faced with a choice: either stay put in the hope of being rescued or try to swim to the nearest land. Opting for the latter, the group salvages what provisions and floating devices they can and strike out into the open ocean. It’s smooth swimming for a little while until they discover that a great white shark is also in the area.

Based on a true story, The Reef is an eco-horror movie that aims to achieve its thrills by being as ‘real’ as possible. Like many shark movies, there is not much of a narrative to follow: group of friends make a decision, start getting picked off, and the fear of their impending doom starts to traumatise them and fray their relationships. 

I guess to give credit where it is due, it was nice to see real shark footage spliced into the film: shots of the shark listing slowly through the misty blue water, coming close to the camera and then turning away like it hasn’t noticed it, and then quickening its pace and opening its mouth to find out what’s the source of splashing. While it doesn’t achieve the same orchestrated jump scares that a stylised computer shark could, using the nature documentary shots of the shark raises the tension and anxiety of the situation, causing audiences to go a through a reasonable rollercoaster of emotions as they empathise with the characters: anxiety, hope, relief, terror, and shock.

Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got on this one. The performances are all fine but nothing to write home about, and the ending is kind of abrupt, which I guess does work but there’s only so much closure that can be leeched out from a small written epilogue.

The Reef was a shark movie that was different enough from the others that we have been watching that it made me remember it, but I do not think that I would recommend it as a must-see.

Director: Andrew Taucki, 2010

Cast: Damian Walshe-Howling, Gyton Grantley, Adrienne Pickering, Zoe Naylor, Keiren Darcy-Smtih, & Mark Simpson

The Sign of Four

Image credit: IMDb

Having had such a lovely time with Partner watching The Hound of the Baskervilles, I was interested to see if there were any other Richardson Sherlock Holmes movies and was elated to discover that a version of The Sign of Four had also been made.

Famous detective and his partner Doctor Watson are hired by a young woman named Mary Morstan to investigate the recent death of her father’s friend from the army as well as the mysterious letter she received along with the Great Mogul, the second largest diamond in the world. What starts as an innocent mystery of a strange letter sent, soon turns immeasurably sinister with the renowned duo becoming immersed in a plot of murder and revenge.

The Sign of Four takes on a little more of a macabre edge than The Hound of the Baskervilles but nevertheless proves to be another enjoyable adaptation of a classic literary thriller. A timeless race against the clock to find a killer on the loose, the excitement of TSOF comes from the known human aspect of the plot rather than the supernatural course that HOFB travels.

Ian Richardson continues to be charming with a little more of an added heroic streak and a fiercer determination that colours some of the more memorable and action-packed scenes within the climactic third act. David Healy plays a lovestruck Watson adorably: slightly flustered, but mostly, sweet, sincere, and sometimes even cool (well, as cool as Watson can get).

The ominous settings of elaborate mansions, dust-filled attics, and carnival fairgrounds are shot in ways that nicely heighten the tension and the sinister and macabre elements of the plot, and the climactic final confrontation, while shot in brilliant daylight in an unlikely and constrictive location, is very memorable. The drama of the plot is also beefed up with the use of montage that conveys the passing of time and teasingly hints that there is a chance that the trail to the killer might even go cold.

Image credit: Beautiful Fraud

A different story and thus, a different vibe of film, The Sign of Four is still an exciting and enjoyable thriller filled with mystery, action, romance, and gore. It felt a little more serious than Hound of the Baskervilles, but still served us perfectly for a cosy Friday night in.

Director: Desmond Davis, 1983

Cast: Ian Richardson, David Healy, Cherie Lunghi, Thorley Walters, Terence Rigby, Clive Merrison, Richard Heffer, John Melia, John Pedrick, & John Benfield

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Image credit: IMDb

I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but when I consider great literature and its adaptation into the visual mediums of the play, movie, or TV series, I think of England. The homeland of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the most memorable sitcom casts and comedy groups, the BBC, and the delightful telemovie. The British telemovie is a wondrous thing: a feature-length adaptation of history’s most captivating novels, made for a specific audience and not marred by the pressures of the mainstream box office and theatrical release. Some of the best adaptations that I have come across have been telemovies, discovered purely by chance and treasured for years afterward. I’m not sure what it is that tickles me about them, maybe it’s the sparing budget, maybe it’s the love for the story that they are retelling, or maybe it’s the idea that a large portion of the population may not even know it exists. Whatever the reason, I do enjoy a modest British telemovie and recently came across a classic on Amazon Prime: an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles starring Ian Richardson.

Renowned detective Sherlock Holmes and his partner Doctor Watson accept an intriguing escort assignment when Sir Henry Baskerville arrives from Canada to take up residence in his ancestral home after the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Upon his arrival, he receives a mysterious letter urging him to stay away from the house and the surrounding moors, which prompts him to hire Holmes to find the sender and their motive. The case takes turn when the superstitious story about a spectral hound that has been terrorising the Baskervilles for generations comes to light and Sir Henry’s own life might be at risk.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated Sherlock Holmes mystery and has been adaptated for the screen time and time again. In true, polite, British fashion, this telemovie is made captivating by the brilliance of the story, the wonderful depictions of these beloved characters by the cast, and the natural allure of the landscape. There is no glossy coating of an extravagant budget, but a modest, misty, and grainy texture to the film: an all-natural vibe that keeps you focused on the narrative as well as feeling the love and respect that the cast and filmmakers have for the story.

Image credit: TV Tropes

Ian Richardson is a very charming Sherlock Holmes: dapper and gentlemanly, but still with a level of snarkiness and pride in his own brilliance, which comes across most delightfully in the cute and teasing way he leads Watson down the paths of his deductive reasoning. Donald Churchill plays a Watson that is consistently awestruck by his friend and partner’s brilliance while also harbouring a strong desire to prove his worth to him. The chemistry between the two leads is endearing and amusing; a very good pairing.

Filled with mystery, murder, romance, and action, the 1983 telemovie adaption of The Hound of the Baskervilles is an exciting little romp that’s perfect for a Friday night in.

Director: Douglas Hickox, 1983

Cast: Ian Richardson, Donald Churchill, Denholm Elliot, Glynis Barber, Nicholas Clay, Ronald Lacey, Connie Booth, & Bryan Blessed

The End of Oak Street

Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes

It’s not always the case, but more often than not it totally is the case that going to see a movie based on nothing other than a mild understanding of the plot and its featuring actors that you like, can end up being the best cinematic experience you’ve had in a while. We sometimes forget that getting pre-emptively excited about a film can curdle the experience of watching it because (often) it’s not as good as what you excitedly imagined it would be.

A couple of weeks ago, Partner and I decided to have a spur-of-the-moment date night and go see a movie. Being based in the country, our ‘local’ cinema doesn’t hold as many options as the main chains that we’ve been used to having in the city so our options were limited. But as luck would have it, the cinema was showing The End of Oak Street: a thriller-y sounding flick that turned out to be an absolute prehistoric romp!

In the quaint, suburban community of Oak Street lives a picture-perfect family. But there is trouble in paradise. Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) is unsatisfied with her marriage and writes basement novels about leaving her family and starting a new life. Greg Platt (Ewan McGregor) has been laid off and is trying to make ends meet and keep the family together. Their daughter Audry is thinking about life after high school, and their son Brian is both the perpetrator and victim of bullying. But when a wholly unbelievable cosmic event transports their entire neighbourhood back to a prehistoric age, their troubles start to look pretty small in comparison.

I walked into The End of Oak Street thinking that this will be a silly and fun dino-survival movie. And I was delightfully surprised to find that it’s so much more. For a start, it’s a film that travels a different road to the main, generic highway that most monster movies do. Regardless of species, zombies in Night of the Living Dead, the shark in Jaws, or the alien in, well, Alien, most monsters work as a narrative catalyst to spark dissension in the ranks, the breakdown of society, and horrific truths that humans are the really just the worst. But in The End of Oak Street the breakdown of the civility and the strain of human relationships is already happening from the first reel. Producer J. J Abrams’ love of Stephen Speilberg bulldozes its way to the front with the overly nostalgic 1980s suburban setting: an idealistic Golden Age that houses a crumbling nuclear family and frayed relations within the community. The ‘work’ of the monsters is already underway so when the dinos actually turn up, they become a catalyst for people banding together rather than breaking apart. And as the protagonists start to piece together some theories as to why their manicured backyard is suddenly overrun with prehistoric flora, completely unexpected plot twists bubble up to alter the audience’s ideas about where the story is headed.

Image credit: Village Cinema

While the characters are a dime-a-dozen dissatisfied suburban types, the central cast delivers performances that are relatable and down-to-earth that make you feel interested in them and their welfare instead of immediately loving or hating them. This is another way in which the film differs from other monster survival movies, as it gently convinces you to ride along with these people rather than sit back and eagerly anticipate the good ones getting saved and the bad ones getting eaten. And before you know it, you’re caring about them on some level, so when something happens to them the shock is real.

Filled with drama, action, and even a few humorous scenes, The End of Oak Street is a delight. It’s an unexpected romp that gently rearranges the building blocks of genre to make something recognisable, but subtly different to what we’ve seen before in other monster movies.

Director: David Robert Mitchell, 2026

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery, Jordan Alexa Davies, P. J Byrne, Anne Gee Byrd, & Emily Kuroda

The Devil's Mouth

Image credit: Wikipedia

While it’s not always the case, we know that there is an allegorical element to monster movies. In many horror films, the monster is a metaphor for something, be it war, global warming, generational trauma, whatever. While curling up with Partner for another bad shark movie on Friday night, it occurred to me that sharks have become a bit of a metaphor for that exciting but uncertain time between adolescence and adulthood. Think about it, so many of these film centre around a group of high-school or university graduates celebrating a bout of absolute freedom before entering the future grind of civilised maturity: the future is both exciting and scary and the severity of dumb actions and dumb decisions hasn’t sunk in yet. I had this realisation recently, while watching The Devil’s Mouth. 

For Sara and her friends, a holiday in Thailand before embarking on the next chapter of their lives seems like the perfect way to unwind after college. Beautiful beaches, scenic boat tours, and magnificent marine wildlife, what could possibly go wrong? The group finds out during a scuba exploration of the labyrinthine network of caves known as the Devil’s Mouth, where they discover that a massive shark has been brought in with the floods. As a series of incidents leave them stranded, lost, injured, hunted, and panicky, old grievances start coming to the surface and the fight for survival becomes even more fraught with danger. 

 At this stage there is not a lot to say about these types of small, under-the-radar shark movies that has not already been said before. The Devil’s Mouth ticks all the boxes of the coming-of-age eco horror subgenre, but I guess where it pulls ahead from other films such as Maneater is in its exploration of the resilience or fragility of relationships when put under pressure. That, and one of the characters’ deaths is not by being chomped. 

While there’s about as much narrative as you can squeeze from a group-of-people-being-hunted-by-shark movie, the film does manage to succeed in creating an ebb and flow of suspense, despair, and hope. Of course, there are a lot of instances where you’re openly telling the TV, ‘well that’s a dumb idea’, but more often than not there are pivotal story moments that you don’t see coming and I think this is what brings the film ahead of others like it, as it subtly forces you to become (ever so slightly) emotionally invested in these otherwise predictable and generic characters. 

Image credit: Pedestrian TV

There are ample amounts of gloomy, underwater shots with something large drifting in the shadows, as well as jump scares, and believable but not realistic shark behaviour that bring a good level of suspense, and the performances are solid enough to make them memorable for at least a couple of weeks after watching the film. If you’re looking for a mindless shark movie to watch, you could do worse that The Devil’s Mouth. 

Director: Jeff Wadlow, 2026 

Cast: Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor, Nico Hiraga, Gavin Casalegno, Tommi Rose, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Tayme Thapthimthong, & Harrison Luna

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Image credit: IMDb

It’s a shame when work, geography, social commitments, and life in general works to dampen your love of something and thus diminish the amount of time you spend doing/enjoying said passion. It’s also a funny and ironic quirk of life that if you have a job tied to a passion of yours, you inevitably end up not putting in any recreational time to enjoy it. Case in point, I love movies: talking about them, watching them, and going to the cinema. I have worked in a segment of the film industry for the last 3 years and the amount of new movies that I have watched has decreased DRAMATICALLY. I was consuming more movies when I worked at a Blockbuster! A sad, sad truth.

Having said that, my lack of interest in going to the cinema at the moment (aside from geography) could really stem from my current opinion that mainstream cinema, which is mostly what I have access to, just isn’t putting forward any tempting fruit. I can’t remember the last time I got excited about a new release.

Regardless, as Marvel-goers, Partner and I did make our way into the cinema on opening weekend to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Forgotten but not gone, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) lives life alone as a full-time Spider-Man. Putting all his energy into fighting crime and being the friendly, neighbourhood superhero, his devotion to the job starts to take an unexpected turn when alarming changes to his senses and powers start to occur. And since drama loves company, a new and incredibly dangerous mind-hopping threat has emerged with plans to teach humanity some hard truths about what (or who) makes monsters.

Considering that the Spider-Man story arc is all about growing up, changing, evolving, and whatnot, Spider-Man: BND is a film that leaves behind that teen-spirited, coming-of-age, fun atmosphere of its predecessors and opts for a more dramatic and self-reflective dive into Peter’s identity as an adult. We all go through that stage in our twenties where we really start to think about, and take note of, our identities and how we’re going to function as an adult. BND is a superhero exploration of that: exploring new freedoms, new barriers, new coping mechanisms, and identifying the things in our lives that are the biggest identity shapers.

Image credit: IMDb

While growing from adolescence into adulthood is a prevalent and very meaningful theme in the film, like with any story where the hero decides to ‘go it alone’, it does feel like some of the filling has been taken away. I think of BND as a jam doughnut that’s only been filled halfway: while the fluffy, airy, sugary pastry is still perfectly lovely to eat, I was hoping for more jam. While Tom Holland delivers another great performance and does efficiently carry the film, still injecting little pops of humour for flavour and texture, at the end of it BND is the angsty filler movie in a coming-of-age series. There’s always one and it’s not particularly bad, but it’s a phase that we won’t mind seeing the end of.

Filled with action, self-reflection, drama, and comedy, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is another perfectly entertaining movie in the MCU.

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton, 2026

Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Jacob Batalon, Sadie Sink, Florence Pugh, Liza Colon-Zayas, & Mark Ruffalo

The Sheep Detectives

Image credit: IMDb

We don’t say it enough, but animals really are wondrous. Think about it, they bring sooo much to human society. They help to feed us, clothe us, guide us, soothe us, they provide jobs in rearing, researching, destroying, and preserving, and they are so often used as such marvelous narrative devices. Whether they are outsmarting villainous fashionist divas a la Disney or satirising the rise of Soviet totalitarianism for Orwell, animals are everywhere and exerting more influence in our daily lives than they and we realise.

In Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives animals, primarily sheep, explore and dissect the generic formula of the whodunnit while remaining a very sweet and moving family movie.

George Hardy is a smalltown shepherd who spends his time tending his flock: feeding them, shearing them, giving them their medicine, and reading crime novels aloud to them. When he is found dead one morning, his flock immediately recognise the telltale signs of a murder, and they put their love of crime novels to the test to solve the mystery.

Based on the novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, The Sheep Detectives is an adorable family whodunnit that is both whimsical and darkly intriguing: like a cross between Babe and Knives Out. Running parallel to the PG murder mystery is a deep and moving story about belonging as well as a shallow exploration into the social complexities of communities and the intricacies of their relationships.

A delightful and whimsical cast of memorable characters zealously dissect and follow the recognisable formula of the whodunnit genre, while simultaneously making fun of the genre by exaggerating key tropes like the inept authorities and hammering home the idea that the formula is so straightforward that even a sheep can solve it. Add to this a darling array of voice talents and it’s a few adorable ideas about the cultural beliefs of sheep and you’ve got a movie that is the perfect way to spend a cozy Sunday afternoon.

Image credit: Australian Catholics

Director: Kyle Balda, 2026

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Regina Hall, Brett Goldstein, Bella Ramsay, Chris O’Dowd, Rhys Darby, Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston, Nicholas Braun, Conleth Hill, Tosin Cole, Hong Chau, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Nicholas Galitzine, Molly Gordon, & Emma Thompson