The shark thriller The Bay by Phil Volken has unveiled its trailer, and it looks set to be as goofy as it is bloody — which is exactly what fans crave.
Francesca Eastwood, Clint Eastwood’s daughter, is starting to carve out a path in Hollywood. She was initially confined to projects with little substance (Westerns and B-movie horror, notably), but since the late 2010s she has landed several intriguing roles. Notably M.F.A., a film in which a student decides to avenge raped women (think Promising Young Woman, but much trashier).
She also had a brief cameo in Shyamalan’s Old and in several of her father’s films (Guilty Verdict, Jersey Boys), until landing a truly good part in Juror No. 2, in which she played the deceased at the heart of the trial. Death is precisely what she’ll have to escape in a completely different register with the shark movie The Bay by Phil Volken, whose first trailer has dropped. It’s set to be a bit silly and very bloody, and that’s exactly what people want from it.
All in the same boat
What to take away from this fairly standard trailer? This survival thriller kicks off like a (bad) episode of The White Lotus: a bunch of slightly dumb characters head off on vacation to a paradise resort. But of course they flirt with danger — or water, in this case — by venturing into shark territory. The guide’s stupidity is legendary (well, without him there wouldn’t be a movie), but there may be more to mine on the filmmaking side.
The majority of the trailer features the same boat. The Bay could thus be a claustrophobic, mid-ocean thriller, and on paper the idea is interesting. Of course it’s a risky concept, since this first glimpse can make it feel like we’ve already seen the whole film. That said, there’s room to hope Volken will give his characters some depth, letting them slide into madness as hours drag on in the bay.
And who knows, with a bit of luck, The Bay could turn into a sharp little satire—hence the sensible comparison to The White Lotus (or Sans filtre): why set foot in shark territory that didn’t ask for trouble, just to please a few oblivious tourists? In Deadline’s wrap-up piece announcing the end of filming, it notes that it was crew missteps that led to a shark getting stuck in the boat’s bait chain.
In an official announcement published on Bloody Disgusting, the director explains his aim:
“The film is designed to maximize the fears that come from the ocean, the unknown, sharks, and, on top of that, the cold, inexorable nature — and, more than anything, human nature.”
On the visual effects front, Volken opted for an animatronic shark rather than CGI, aiming for a more realistic look. In the United States, The Bay will hit theaters and VOD on July 17. It does not yet have a release date scheduled in France.
