BEAST OF WAR (2025)

4 stars

Signature Entertainment. Digital Available Now. DVD & Blu ray 20th October

With a title like BEAST OF WAR I nearly passed on reviewing this – that will teach me not to read the whole press release! As this is a shark movie – and not one of those silly CG fest that turn up on the SyFy channel – but an actual one worth watching.

Emanating from Australia this was inspired by the actual events around the sinking of the HMAS Armidale in the Timor Sea.

It is 1942 and the film opens at boot camp for a bunch of new recruits – this quickly sketches in the relationships between the various young soldiers which will be important later and allows us to get to know them and care about them. Indigenous Leo (Mark Coles Smith) rescues Will (Joel Nankervis) when he falls into a deep muddy puddle during training – it’s gives the duo extra privileges as it showed the kind of selfless acts they will need in battle. A friendship is cemented. Of course rivalries also emerge between the young soldiers – especially with racist Des (Sam Delich).

Also intercut are scenes from Leo’s pre-war life and, suffused in red, show a trauma which will come back to haunt him as the story unfolds.

Shipped out, their ship is hit by Japanese planes somewhere in the Timor Sea. The boat is hit and sinks. Leo drags Will from the wreckage. On the surface there are dead bodies floating. Fires burning. A few others have survived and they manage to make a raft out of piece of the sunk ship. A motorboat engine nearby offers a possible way home but then a huge shark attacks… dragging one of the men under. A Great White – attracted by movement or blood.

Will they survive long enough to be rescued…

Director Kiah Roache-Turner, working from his own script, expertly handles the tension, as the group face a fight for survival against this deadly denizen of the deep and has created a nail biting thriller. Despite being on the open sea it manages to feel contained, constrained, switch the men trapped and is gorgeously and atmospherically shot by Mark Wareham. The cast is strong, with Mark Coles Smith especially good and the practical effects depicting the sharp toothed terror are excellent. It would be true to say that as various incidents pile up it does skirt with the ridiculous – truth is stranger than fiction?

Steve Kirkham