Movies
Animatronic Shark Movie ‘Beast of War’ Rated “R” for Bloody Violent Content & Gore!
Survival is the only victory in director Kiah Roache-Turner‘s (Wyrmwood) World War II shark attack horror movie Beast of War, and the film has received an “R” rating from the MPA ahead of its premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas this coming September.
Beast of War is rated “R” for “bloody violent content, gore and language.”
The period WWII film is loosely based on real-life events, pitting soldiers against a great white shark, and will be released in theaters and on VOD from Well Go USA on October 10.
Beast of War “follows a warship carrying hundreds of Australian soldiers across the Timor Sea to the frontline of WWII. Suddenly, Japanese fighter jets scream out of the sky, and within minutes the ocean becomes a hell of steel, fire, oil, and blood. While a handful of soldiers build a makeshift raft from floating debris as they cling to their lives, their biggest battle is yet to come. In the dark below, the ultimate apex predator — a great white shark — hunts in the wreckage and is drawn to the smell of fresh blood in the water.”
The horror movie stars Joel Nankervis, Mark Coles Smith, Sam Delich, Lee Tiger Halley, Sam Parsonson, Maximillian Johnson, Tristan McKinnon, and Aswan Reid.
Formation Effects handled the movie’s shark effects, utilizing a mix of classic old school animatronics and puppeteering, with that practical work aided by cutting edge visual effects.
The team previewed in an official press release sent out this month, “The shark, an epic scale that hasn’t been done in Australia before, was a multidisciplinary approach across prosthetics, animatronics, puppeteering and CG animation, all led by the Formation team.”
“This project was an absolute dream for a creature maker,” said Steve Boyle. “The shark couldn’t just be a visual effect; it had to feel like a living, breathing presence. We built it to perform in real water with the actors, ensuring every scene felt authentic.”
Boyle’s statement continued, “The digital effects then pushed the creature beyond the physical to deliver full-scale, heart-pounding attack sequences.”
The press release goes into further detail: “At the heart of the shark’s creation was a custom-engineered, half-ton animatronic powered by a unique compressed-air propulsion system, enabling it to move through the water with tremendous weight and presence. Covered in meticulously crafted silicon skin, the animatronic featured fully articulated mechanics controlled by puppeteers, who ensured its jaw and body motion felt organic in every shot.”
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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