Upamanyu Biswas
The survival thriller film, ‘Something in the Water,’ follows a group of five friends whose wedding get-together in the Caribbeans turns awry when they get stranded at sea. Determined to get Meg and Kayla back together, the friends take a trip to a remote island, hoping to help them reconcile their differences. After a brief stay, their return trip is sidetracked when they realize they have wandered into shark-infested waters. Subsequently, they must fight against all odds as the predators begin circling them from all directions.
Directed by Hayley Easton Street, the movie delves into a story about friendship during an impossible circumstance. The five friends have to stick together as the frightening external forces of nature take matters out of their hands. Although it primarily hinges on a quest for survival, it also showcases the ties between people, resilience, and fortitude. Given the nature of the harrowing ordeal of the characters, who are stranded at sea, it prompts questions about the reality of the situation and whether the film itself is based on reality.
Something in the Water is a Creature Feature Centering on Camaraderie
‘Something in the Water’ is a fictional story of survival against the odds written by Cat Clarke. With sharks being the primary source of fear in the narrative, the movie dives into the relationships between the five girlfriends – Meg, Kayla, Cam, Lizzie, and Ruth. The group gets stuck in a precarious situation as they try to help each other in their personal journeys, leading to a whirlwind of trouble descending on them. However, Clarke and director Hayley Easton Street were intrigued by the prospect of exploring the human tale at the center of the story instead of the overriding horror elements of the sharks.
In an interview, the director stated, “There’s a lot of these films, shark thrillers, and I think our film is completely different, because it’s a friendship movie, with sharks. It’s really about the characters and if you can’t connect with the characters, if you’re not emotionally invested, it doesn’t matter what happens to them. That was the thing that really drew me to this.” The filmmaker highlighted the camaraderie between the group of friends as the central aspect, which helps them keep going despite being engulfed in the eye of a tornado. Their bond is integral to the film’s exploration of what it means to be a good friend and the commitment it takes to be one.
“You’re restricted in a certain way, because there’s only certain things that can happen when they’re stuck in the water, but actually, what was interesting to me was how they all reacted in that situation,” Street said. According to her, while some shark thrillers are more interested in depicting a story about the survival of the fittest, her version is about a group of friends sticking up for one another despite their differences. It was a salient point that helped her differentiate ‘Something in the Water’ from other films. She elaborated further by saying, “We’re put in these sort of situations when you’ve got friends that have been friends for years, you do kind of take the piss out of each other, and you do argue and complain about each other. But when it comes down to it, and someone’s life’s on the line, you come through.“
The Sharks in Something in the Water Are Not Inherently Evil
Although creature feature films tend to depict the predator as a ravenous and monstrous beast, the sharks in ‘Something in the Water‘ are more driven by their nature and circumstances. Hayley Easton Street was of the opinion that the sharks in her film are not murderers but desperate creatures with their own survival on their minds. She explained, “I wanted the shark to not be a monster. They’re not serial killers. Sharks are in this decimated [position] where there’s trash, and there’s not much fish, and they need to eat. But they’re not like the Megalodon, just killing everyone.“
She admitted that since she is an avid environmentalist, she wanted to preserve sharks and not villanize them in the public eye. She stated that following the release of Steven Spielberg’s iconic shark thriller, ‘Jaws,‘ a lot of people went out and started hunting sharks. Wishing to avoid the same scenario, she depicted them as animals in great need rather than dangerous and nightmarish beasts. “Lots of people have [said], since we made it, [that] it’s a horror, because it has sharks,“ Street said. “We do have a little bit of blood and gore in it, but not much compared to some films and it was more about what was going to happen. I think if you show it all too early, you’re sort of done and there’s no way to really ramp that up. Again, it goes back to wanting it to be about these characters, rather than about the shark.”
At the heart of ‘Something in the Water‘ lies an examination of a friendship between five women as they contend with their private battles amidst a bigger one. The sharks in the water are just a facilitating factor that allows the movie to shift the focus on the characters and look at who they are as people through the lens of a tense monster thriller. Ultimately, its atmosphere and events may be exaggerated, but the dramatization helps probe into the makings of the friendship and the sacrifice between them.
