Director: Jo-Ann Brechin
Writers: Jo-Ann Brechin, Katharine McPhee
Stars: Virginia Gardner, Mel Jarnson, Mitchell Hope
Synopsis: Follows best friends Maddie and Trish as they find themselves trapped in a remote lagoon with the dangerous killer whale named Ceto.
There is an orca fact clearly stated twice in this film. Orcas have never attacked people in the wild. They have only ever been aggressive toward humans in dire circumstances like when they are in captivity or feel their pod is being threatened. It’s been observed that orcas are social creatures who need other orcas and that they mourn the deaths of those they love. When they are left alone in captivity, they get depressed. With all these realities firmly in place, Killer Whale still attempts an elevated creature feature where an orca is the antagonist.
There is so much about this film that is a stretch. The torturous lengths the script goes to explain how this could all come about is agonizing to watch. The skeptic in all of us will be apoplectic at the sheer lunacy at play on screen. Not only about the orca’s behavior, but about the attempts to elevate this film beyond its premise.
Writers Jo-Ann Brechin and Katharine McPhee seem to have wanted to write a horror film with depth. The structure is there for this to be a film that has meaning beyond the creature feature premise. There are so many different angles set up in this film that it becomes too ambitious. The different threads are never quite fleshed out and no one of them really rises to the surface. All of them reach their conclusions with a whimper, not a bang. It’s too much, but because no story is satisfying and it’s also not nearly enough.
You keep wondering if there’s going to be a bit of humor to this. You keep wondering about one of the orca’s intended victims floating on an inflatable slice of pizza and why there is absolutely no commentary about this. There is no commentary at all, not even a groaner of a Free Willy joke. The film is so self serious that it just can’t understand the inherent goofiness of all of this.
In what could have been the funniest plot thread, or at least a bit of dark humor to offset the head scratching melodrama, is that there is a horrifically unscrupulous person in charge of a terrible, rundown tourist trap of a sea park. From the prologue, there is a scene where Josh (Mitchell Hope) sneaks Maddie (Virginia Gardner) and Trish (Mel Jarnson) into the park, and there is a tossed off line between a security guard and the person at the other end of his radio; this animal has killed at least three people already. Why aren’t we given the moustache twirling, cigar smoking fat cat in charge of this crummy knock off Sea World? Why are we denied the pleasure of an inept crew somehow transporting this animal to this strange remote lagoon? Why don’t we see the pure evil train of thought of, “this animal is killing people because it’s unhappy in captivity, let’s torture it by releasing it into a space that creates a natural form of captivity?” The fact that all these reasonable things are completely unexplained, even in a serious way is beyond baffling.
Instead of a horror-comedy we get a hodgepodge of a film that’s achingly dull and lacking in any sort of joy. The friendship of Maddie and Trish is so ill-defined. The scenes of them having fun drinking and taking drugs at a bar looks so performative. Hunky Josh is so boring. Even the attacks by the orca are so obvious and telegraphed that the only reason you know it was intended to be scary is by a cliched music cue. The 89 minutes of Killer Whale‘s runtime feel like an eternity.
Everything about Killer Whale is utterly uninteresting. The filmmakers attempted far too ambitious a plot. If there was no animal at all, if this were a film where Maddie and Trish finally have a heart-to-heart about all of their issues while trapped on a rock in the middle of the ocean it would have been a passable drama. Even Trish’s completely bonkers revelation would have been fitting. Yet, we are given something that works neither as a drama or horror or even a “so bad it’s good” unintentional comedy. We’re given a creature feature with no teeth and absolutely nothing to say.
