KILLER WHALE (2026)

3 stars

Plaion Pictures. Digital. 18th May

When I first got the press release for KILLER WHALE my first reaction was ’it makes a change from a shark’ — though to be fair the end result for the victims is the same.

In an initial video introduction from World of Orca, we are filled in on the titular creatures. One of the employees there enters the pool calling for Seito, who has been a star attraction at the aquatic park… when she is attacked. Cue the titles.

Maddie (Virginia Gardner), a promising cellist, is working late at her job at a diner, clearing up. She is visited by her boyfriend Chad (Isaac Crawley). They are interrupted by an intruder with a shotgun demanding the cash. There is a struggle and the gun goes off affecting her hearing … Chad manages to chase him off but then is subsequently killed by the criminal as he runs him down.

One year later. Maddie has severely impaired hearing and has to wear aids and is still grieving. She has also stopped playing music and is just working at the restaurant. Her friend Trish (Mel Jarnson), who she hasn’t seen in ages, turns up and tells her she has booked a trip – one they always talked about going on. Her friend makes her money through social media (as does everyone these days, don’t they?).

So off they go to Thailand. Trish has planned, as part of the vacation, for her friend to see Seito (which had been Maddie and Chad’s dream) but her friend gets upset, as she wanted to see it in the wild not in a ‘fish tank’. Through a series of plot contrivances, the whale is released into the ocean and, whilst out on a jet ski with one of the local boys Josh (Mitchell Hope), they are attacked by the massive and toothy marine mammal. The chap ends up as a tasty meal and the two girls find themselves trapped on a small outcropping of rock. So think THE SHALLOWS times two.

Jo-Anne Brechin directs the derivative script which was co-written with Katharine McPhee. It is rather drawn out – less whale attacks, more two friends reconnecting. Poor old Gardner seems to go through it when she meets up with her buddies – having been stuck up a large pole in 2022’s FALL.

Many of the scenes look kind of fake as they look to survive and the film is trying to make some kind of comment on the fact that keeping whales in captivity is bad. There is a twist in the tale.

Steve Kirkham