Director: Le-Van Kiet | Starring: Alicia Silverstone, James Tupper | Runtime: 89 minutes

Shark movies are their own strange ecosystem. Somewhere between Jaws and Sharknado lies a space for low-budget, high-stakes thrillers that rely on isolation, water, and toothy predators to generate suspense. The Requin (2022), written and directed by Le-Van Kiet (Furie), dips into that space with ambition but surfaces bloated with misfires.

Starring Alicia Silverstone as a grief-stricken woman thrust into a survival nightmare, The Requin wants to be both a meditative drama about trauma and a vicious, wave-crashing thriller. Unfortunately, it struggles to find balance—and identity. The result is a film with scattered strengths buried under weak writing, clunky dialogue, and a CGI shark that should’ve stayed in the depths.

Premise: Good Setup, Thin Payoff

The plot is straightforward. Jaelyn (Silverstone) and her husband Kyle (James Tupper) retreat to a floating villa in Vietnam, hoping to heal after a personal tragedy (the death of their newborn). The trip is meant to offer rest and reconnection—but quickly turns into a nightmare when a violent tropical storm tears their villa from its moorings and sets them adrift in open water.

Stranded, injured, and at the mercy of the ocean, the couple struggles to survive. And of course, circling beneath them is a relentless shark—the titular “Requin,” derived from the French word for shark.

It’s a classic survival-thriller blueprint: isolation, injury, a strained relationship, and a predator. But while the premise holds promise, the execution never quite lives up to it.

Alicia Silverstone: The Lone Anchor

Let’s get one thing clear—Alicia Silverstone commits. As Jaelyn, she gives the kind of performance that almost elevates the material. She’s physically and emotionally all-in, portraying trauma with raw fragility and desperation with convincing grit. Even when the dialogue undercuts her, or the effects look cheap, she never phones it in. Her performance is what keeps The Requin from completely sinking.

James Tupper, as her husband Kyle, has less to do. He’s mostly there to argue, get injured, and eventually be reduced to a plot device. Their chemistry feels forced—more scripted than lived-in—but that’s less on the actors and more on the writing. The couple’s grief is hinted at early on, but never fully explored. The emotional weight behind their situation is superficial at best.

Pacing Problems and Repetition

For a movie about a shark attack, the shark is barely present for much of the runtime. Instead, The Requin devotes its first two-thirds to the aftermath of the storm—Kyle’s injury, Jaelyn’s panic, and a lot of floating.

The intention is clear: the film wants to build tension slowly, leaning into the psychological toll of survival. But the pacing drags. Scenes feel repetitive. There’s only so many times you can watch characters paddle in circles or cry into the ocean before it starts to feel stagnant.

The film only kicks into gear in the final 20 minutes, when the shark finally becomes a real threat. And while the action does ramp up, it’s undermined by unconvincing effects and clunky choreography. There’s a lot of screaming, a lot of blood, and a few decent jolts—but by then, it feels too little, too late.

Visuals and CGI: The Big Letdown

Much of The Requin was shot using green screen and digital backdrops, which becomes painfully obvious in the wide shots. The floating villa looks like it was composited into a video game. The ocean doesn’t ripple naturally. The sky looks painted on. It’s distracting, and it sucks the tension out of scenes that should feel visceral.

Then there’s the shark. For a movie named after one, it’s astonishing how fake it looks. The CGI lacks weight, texture, and presence. When it lunges, it might as well be a PlayStation 2 cutscene. It’s not just that it doesn’t look real—it doesn’t feel threatening. Compare this to the gritty realism of The Shallows or even the goofy fun of 47 Meters Down, and The Requin doesn’t measure up.

To be fair, some close-up shots—especially underwater—are well-composed. And Kiet does show flashes of style, especially when portraying Jaelyn’s hallucinations or moments of disorientation. But these are isolated successes in a sea of rough visuals.

Themes: Trauma, Guilt, Survival

One of the more interesting elements of The Requin is its attempt to frame the survival story through the lens of grief. Jaelyn’s struggle isn’t just with the elements or the shark—it’s with herself. The death of her child has left her fractured, and her desperation to survive feels tied to a need for redemption.

But these themes are never fully developed. They’re hinted at in dream sequences and brief flashbacks, but the script lacks the nuance to explore them deeply. As a result, what could’ve been a layered character study feels like window dressing.

You can see what Kiet was going for—a genre film with emotional depth—but the blend doesn’t gel. The movie isn’t tight enough to work as a thriller, and not insightful enough to function as a drama. It ends up stuck in between.

Final Verdict

The Requin is a frustrating film because the ingredients are there. A stripped-down, ocean-set thriller anchored by a committed lead performance and a claustrophobic setting? That could’ve worked. But weak writing, lifeless dialogue, unconvincing effects, and sluggish pacing drag it down.

Alicia Silverstone deserves credit for throwing herself into the role. She’s raw, tough, and emotionally honest, even when the script lets her down. In a better film, her performance might’ve been the breakout comeback she deserves. Here, it’s mostly a reminder that great actors can only do so much with poor material.

Ultimately, The Requin flirts with survival-thriller greatness but never quite gets there. It’s not awful—it’s just average, undercooked, and forgettable. Shark movie fans may find a few tense moments to enjoy, but for most viewers, this one’s best left adrift.

Rating: 4/10
A solid performance and a strong concept can’t save this shark thriller from shallow waters.

Want this rewritten as a more casual blog post or a snappier YouTube-style script? Happy to do that too.