Dark Tide (2012)

 

This film seems to be maligned quite a bit. It's probably down to the marketing, because you can mostly find stuff concerning this one that sells it as one of those other shark films, where the beasties are mercilessly hunting the people on board the boat. 

This is however most emphatically not the case as this is more a drama with some tense moments thrown in. Also: the sharks are not monsters in this film but just the wondrous yet possibly dangerous animals they are. So there. 

Halle Berry is Kate, a diver who spends most of her time at sea swimming with great whites. She also does this outside the cage in order to study them more closely, which of course attracts quite a lot of attention. However, when during a dive something goes wrong and one of her friends/colleagues gets killed, she is understandably shaken and refuses to swim with sharks anymore. 

I assume most people would have the same gut reaction. 

However, bills needs to be paid, so she still does tours where she takes tourists out to spot seals. This is alas not where the money is, seeing as most people visiting South Africa want to see the sharks. Her husband (they sort of separated in the wake of the accident) convinces her to once again head out to the sharks as a wealthy British guy will pay quite a bit of money that will get her out of debt. She is hesitant, but eventually she agrees. But of course, the guy turns out to be a real prick who pulls something dangerous. This makes Kate rather irate (hey, that rhymes) and they head out to Shark Alley (yes, that is a real place) where the big sharks swim. And then a storm hits... 

This is not the fastest film out there. And it is understandable why people expecting to see a sharkfest would be disappointed, but that would be doing the film a disservice. It isn't that bad, honestly. The acting is mostly decent, except for Ralph Brown playing the snooty Brit, as his direction seems to have been: "Again, but with more arsehattery." It is also true that Halle Berry's motivation is a bit skewed at times, and especially the final act makes little sense, as she should have known better than to head out when a storm is brewing. But since when have stupid decisions ever stopped characters before? 

What really makes this film work, is the excellent underwater photography, especially of very real sharks. There is some CG here and there, of course for the attack scenes (of which there are a few, but not too many) and it is quite refreshing to see these wonderful animals being portrayed just like that: intelligent animals. I mean, sure, there are a couple of attacks, but the first and last make sense. The middle one with the poachers? Not so much. That one is really venturing into 'Jaws' territory and it doesn't fit, as great whites are not that prone to attacking humans anyway. 

And even though the film is a tad slow and mostly non-eventful, the final 20 minutes or so are surprisingly tense, with a good buildup and two deaths of which one is pretty harrowing and one rather unexpected. Not that you can't see it coming, but the way in which it happens is pretty sudden. 

So this might not be the best of the best or even the most entertaining film with sharks, but it is decent and certainly worth a watch if you feel more up to a drama that happens to have cool underwater shots and sharks thrown in the mix. The thriller-portion at the end doesn't mesh that well with the rest perhaps, but there was a clear setup to this finale, so it doesn't detract too much. Give it a try, just don't expect too much.