Following the enormous critical and financial success in the local theaters, the release of “The Meg” in Chinese cinemas started a wave of similarly-produced creature features and animal-attack films to capitalize on its release. That has led to a steady stream of cheap, goofy creature features that remains popular churning out titles to this day which includes this one from 2021 that takes its influence from the Australian film “The Reef” from 2011 and “The Shallows” from 2017.
Taking a trip together, Dr. Shen (Zhao Yihan) heads out with her sister Yiran (Luan Mingyuan), her friend Wen Di (Hong Shuang), and Wendy's boyfriend Timmy (Huang Tao) for a special anniversary boat trip out to sea. Despite insisting that they're together, a series of personal squabbles amongst the group causes them to fail to notice a killer shark roaming the area, which strands them in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. Despite being able to escape from the shark, their personal squabbles keep interfering and allowing the creature to take them out one by one until only Dr. Shen is left, forcing her into a vicious battle against the bloodthirsty creature to try to get away alive.
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There's quite a lot to really like in “Red Water.” Among its better attributes is the solid and straightforward story by writer/director Huang that manages to combine the influences from several entries into a single feature. The main inspiration from “The Reef” focuses on a group of individuals stranded at sea while being targeted by a Great White Shark stalking and killing them one by one. That carries on through a large part of the first half here where the group is attacked while enjoying their boat trip and are forced into a series of struggles to survive the situation. Either trying to get onto a working boat, preserve their strength after being wounded, or alerting others to their presence all come about following that storyline, and are made all the more suspenseful, knowing the shark is following them. The second half, echoing “The Shallows” which focuses on Dr. Shen being stranded alone on a piece of rock to get away from the shark, is a logical enough continuation and gives this a solid overall setup.
With this in play, “Red Water” is able to go through some generally fun and enjoyably cheesy shark attack scenes made all the more fun for embracing that aspect heavily. The opening attack on the random divers that leaves the fateful fishing boat in the ocean is the perfect starting point, giving off the idea of the grossly exaggerated shark swimming around, chomping and biting victims to pieces. That continues with the attacks in the sea where it takes out Yiran and Timmy, leaving the survivors to try to swim to safety while the shark circles around the bloodsoaked water. Later scenes involving it trying to capsize or ram the boat with them inside, offer up some more decent action scenes and spice up the proceedings with different types of sequences while the creature prowls the water around them. The big highlight is the astounding second half, taking on a near-silent battle with the shark as Shen uses her wits and the elements to battle alone, which is far better than the cheesy action that has come before, making for a much more memorable time.
There aren't too many flaws in “Red Water” but it does have some minor drawbacks. The main issue is the aforementioned need to bring two different films together in one location as that causes everything that happens here to be quite easy to spot where it's sourced from. Taking influence from “The Reef” to show how they get stranded in the water and have to deal with the elements while the shark hunts them down is quite easy to see, as this takes so many queues from there as to how they get stranded as well as the awful characterizations since just about everyone here other than Shen are irritating and awful people to be around. The second half that looks at “The Shallows” is just as obvious, focusing on the single survivor fighting back from a secured location while injured. All of this combines to make the film quite predictable and easy to see what's going to happen. On top of that, the goofy CGI here will always be a hurdle to overcome, since the appearance of the shark and the way it moves and behaves will always produce more laughs than anything.
A cheesy killer shark film mixing two different movies together to uneven results, “Red Water” comes off better than you would expect it to be, judged on its own merits even if the overriding familiarity takes a toll on it in the end. If you're not bothered by those factors, are curious about it, or are just a fan of cheesy creature feature cinema in general, this isn't a bad way to go.
