Killer Whale

Campy, horrible horror movies can be an amazing thing when done right. When done wrong, they can be painful to sit through. Where does Killer Whale stack up? Not good.

The opening is dumb. Not "so good it is bad" dumb, just plain dumb. A trainer gets into the tank with an orca and acts confused when it doesn't come when called. She is even more confused when it starts circling her. Then, she gets eaten! No tension, no mystery, just boom, ATEN!

We jump cut to Maddie and her boyfriend Chad. Yes, Chad. He gives her a cello necklace to remember him by right before she is whisked off to the crazy, high stakes world of...touring orchestras. Their little lovefest is interrupted by a mugger. Our hunky boyfriend promptly dispatches the robber, but then gets splattered in the parking lot while Maddie longingly stares into his eyes. Because of this trauma, she no longer has the will to play the cello.

The acting is rough. The action is pretty tame. The characters are incredibly one dimensional. But let us stick with it and see where the water takes us.

Maddie needs to get back out there. She decides to party with her best friend Trish on Echo Beach. It is a party destination that gives off major Club Dread vibes but never uses them. Trish's master plan is to reunite Maddie with her favorite orca. Maddie is against the idea because the whale is in captivity now. It also recently lost its calf, setting up a heavy handed parallel where the two of them can bond over their shared grief.

Standard horror tropes ensue, heavily mixed with atrocious CGI. Why do we need a green screen for a beach scene? When Trish's boyfriend Josh gets punted off his jet ski, everyone tries to take refuge on a floating rubber raft. It just drop kicked a jetski!

I will give the movie props for actually showing sunburns after a while, but I am pretty sure their Ziploc bag water purification plan does not work the way they think it does. When hunger sets in, they have a heart to heart conversation over cracking open a sea urchin using Chad's cremation stone box. The craziest part is that it is all played completely straight. There is no irony or satire to be found. Then we get a lot of boring reminiscing and some incredibly weak jump scares for what feels like an eternity.

Finally, a dramatic revelation drops. Trish set up the whole robbery from the beginning to pay off her student loans! But if the robbery went completely south and Chad died, how did she pay them off anyway? At this point, I wanted to push her in the water myself.

Trish eventually gets what is coming to her in the dumbest way possible. She confesses her evil plan to a deaf girl (the robbery ruptured Maddie's eardrum when a shotgun went off too close to her head) and then jumps into the water without waiting for a response, confirmation, or any indication Maddie is going to make a break for it. Her leg gets bitten off. She eventually dies on the beach directly over the handwritten letters S.O.S. in a composition made for the movie poster.

Finally, we get a moody climax with the orca in an intimate rainstorm. Does Maddie free the trapped whale so everyone lives happily ever after? No. She gets her necklace stuck under a rock, stabs the whale in the eye, and it swims off crying. She starts playing the cello again and all is right with the world. Except for all her friends being dead.

Killer Whale is not so bad it is good. It is just boring and lazy. It is not even worth throwing on the couch to riff with friends. Skip it entirely. If you are deeply into 2000s slop like Sharknado, then maybe this is for you. Everyone knows Jaws is the superior aquatic thriller, but if you are looking for a more adjacent but genuinely better movie, 1977's Orca is actually really solid. Heck, just go watch Free Willy. The acting is way better.