Movie Review of "The Reef"

Now that we've reached the time of year when there isn't anything worth watching on TV, my wife and I have been making an effort to catch up on our movie watching.

One movie we had a chance to watch recently was the 2010 horror film The Reef. We decided to watch this movie both because it was something her aunt had watched and apparently liked and because we were in the mood for something different and this seemed to be an alternative to our normal movies (which usually include zombies or a knife carrying maniac).

The movie is about a group of friends who capsize their boat after striking a reef while traveling from Australia to Indonesia. Since the boat is sinking, they decide their best bet is to brave the shark-infested waters and try to swim for a nearby island.

There are some parts of the movie that were definitely worth watching. The scenes involving the killer shark are somewhat intense without becoming too unrealistic. I especially liked the fact the shark would toy with them a bit before actually attacking because you didn't know if it was going to swim away or actually try to devour one of them.

However, overall, I honestly wasn't that impressed with this film. As I said before, there were some great scenes. But, to get to those scenes, you have to suffer through long periods that consist of the group swimming and panicking over every little noise and shadow.

To put it another way, there was about 30-40 minutes of actual horror movie. The rest of it was a bunch of filler material that could have easily been edited down to a few minutes without having any real impact on the plot. And, I'm not exaggerating about that.

In fact, to tell you the truth, we didn't even watch the last 20 minutes of the movie. Instead, we fast forwarded until the shark attacked and just watched long enough to see who was killed next and who ended up surviving at the end. The movie was much more enjoyable that way and I actually regretted not doing that sooner because we could have watched a zombie movie instead.

If you are in the mood for a good shark attack movie, I recommend picking up a copy of the movie Jaws instead of this one.

My Grade: 2 stars out of a possible 5.