As another Shark Week draws to a close, a new entry in shark attack horror swims into theaters and VOD. Australian aquatic horror movie Great White releases on July 16 (from RLJE Films), pitting a group of tourists against one of the ocean’s most fearsome predators. When the great white capsizes their seaplane, the five travelers must contend with both their stalking hunter and the harsh conditions that come with being adrift at sea. That setup alone only scratches the surface of why aquatic horror runs as deep as the ocean when it comes to potential and untapped fears.

Great White stars Tucker and Dale vs. Evil actress Katrina Bowden, Aaron Jakubenko, and Kimie Tsukakoshi as unfortunate travelers fighting for survival. Michael Boughen (Tomorrow, When The War Began, Killer Elite, The Loved Ones) wrote the script while commercial director Martin Wilson makes his feature directorial debut. Their feature underscores how much humans are outside of their element while at sea. And how that compounds the harrowing fight to live.

Oceans cover nearly two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, and only roughly five percent of that has been explored and charted. That means that so much of the world remains undiscovered yet and unseen by humankind. More importantly, that means that so much of the aquatic world remains unknown, which is the very thing that fear exploits so well. The less we know about something, the more our imagination fills in the blanks for the worse.

The ocean’s average depth is about 12,100 feet, with the southern end of the Mariana Trench, the Challenger Deep, considered the deepest part at a depth of over 36,000 feet deep. Extreme pressure makes it difficult to explore these depths, and what we do know paints a picture of a strange, alien world far below the surface. The pitch dark, of course, is where monsters live. Horror finds a way of filling in the blanks of the unknown with the fantastical. The Mariana Trench gives birth to aquatic nightmares like Underwater or the unforgettable sequence in James Wan’s Aquaman that see the titular hero fight off a feral species of sea monsters adapted to the pressurized deep. The ocean bottom harbored the creature from Deep Rising and gave a resting place for the failed Russian experiment that birthed a new monster in Leviathan. It’s even where the gigantic monster in Cloverfield originated. Their undisturbed and boundless habitat allows for extreme growth and provides them with characteristics that humanity is ill-equipped to counter. 

Underwater

But the ocean’s deep makes for horror rooted in the fantastical. The closer to the surface you get, the more rooted in reality the horror becomes. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws kickstarted the summer blockbuster and instilled a fear of sharks and the ocean in generations to come. It inspired a wave of shark attack movies that would help solidify it as the most robust subsection of aquatic horror. So much so that Discovery dedicates an entire week every year to dispelling myths about the predator.  

In the past few decades, shark horror branched out in surprising ways. From exploitation to B-horror fun to bigger features that push well past the boundaries of realism, shark horror became a subgenre in its own right. Even in the more fantasy-based entries, like Deep Blue Sea, the one thing that helps anchor them to reality is the emphasis that humans aren’t designed for aquatic life. We’re not even really designed for swimming, making us easy prey for predators at sea.

Deep Blue Sea

That vulnerability translates across aquatic horror, no matter the variety. Whether it’s ancient Lovecraftian gods emerging from the depths or a great white shark searching for a meal, the core thread is that humans are ill-equipped to deal. Escape often isn’t an option, and survival odds reduce significantly out at sea. Like space, the oceans offer a final frontier of exploration, and its biodiversity only contributes to the great fear of the unknown.

Great White sees its core fivesome trapped at sea, adrift without food or water under a blazing hot sun. That alone would present a nightmarish survival horror scenario, but it adds one of horror’s favorite animals to the mix to hunt them down. Above all, it offers another showcase of why aquatic horror has no shallow end; it taps into that same dread that transcends genre borders. Humans are mere blips in the cosmos, a small, vulnerable creature that ranks very low on the food chain. 

Great White releases in theaters and VOD on July 16.