The Requin
SABAN FILMSTo put it bluntly, The Requin as an immersive and exciting cinematic adventure provides a highly underwhelming and lifeless feature. However, as much as the following may sound contradictory, for what it tries to accomplish in terms of mood, it might just find a glimmer of success. It is a feature that tries to implement an incredibly hard-hitting and heavy undertone of human pathological causality – that on paper couples the terror of physical harm in terms of the shark itself – but the end product bites off a far, far more than it can chew and, ultimately, crumbles away.
Speaking of the tonal mood, it's quite impressive how director Le Van Kiet aesthetically provides the central characters' mental torture and the fragile memories and arcs of their pain. In maybe one fleeting moment – specifically the feature’s opening – that captures a much needed and certain intensity and atmospheric tone that provides a glimpse of terror yet to come in a brooding foreshadowing. Nevertheless, said motif and tension are undermined with Alicia Silverstone's performance, particularly the budget that can not provide the intensity and production merit such a feature demands. Granted, this does not look too overly cheap. The green screen is evidently clear and never quite conquers itself in confidence or depiction, but to that degree, it does not forgo the experience itself.
To that extent, it would sadly be the limitations of its main actress Silverstone who can not keep up with the demand of both the tone and range of craft that the screenplay and narrative are wanting to provoke. To her credit, the actress arguably gives everything she has in terms of emotional range, and on the odd occasion, it could be said that the screenplay is what lets the side down, but once the emotional core begins to peel away, it is abundantly clear that Silverstone does not have the dramatic range to provide such a searing depiction of morality and mental health. She hinders one emotion’s tick of eyes left to right and a slight shake, rinse and repeat, and the audience has seen the full capabilities of the feature’s central lead. Not only is it tiresome for the audience to see this constant projection, but it gives so little for the feature to find a multifaceted edge to the psychological undertones it wants to depict; if anything, it feels oxymoronic or even a backwards step. Furthermore, her on-screen husband provides zero emotional immersion or chemistry that could perhaps have been the saving grace or meer emotional immersion the feature so desires, but alas, it is nonexistent. The crux of the feature’s emotional power and, ultimately, the context of the piece overall is as transparent as the water this story unfolds in.
Before long, the weight on Silverstone's shoulders crumbles to the point of oblivion and the actress who has a significant amount of singular screen time isolates and bores the audience with a lifeless and flat on-screen character – the audience unable to escape this ironic nightmare on screen. A far more frightening peril in itself than the antagonistic shark, which is a combination of archive footage and CGI. This is not Jaws and it is not The Shallows, but it does okay work with what it has, and the viewer will no doubt get a feeling of the power of this animal. It just is not quite the daunting atmospheric brutality they have seen in smaller and more agile depictions of this very story.
In fact, it does beg the question of why anyone would spend their time on this venture when far greater exploits and entertainment has been produced in greater sprawling fashion such as the features above. Fans of Silverstone might get a kick out of this, or fans of B-movie exploits supporting independent creators will find something to champion, but all in all, The Requin is a dull, unproductive, and flat venture with minimal reward.
