Of razor-sharp teeth, murky waters, and deathly fear

It’s fair to say the Sharksploitation genre is often tried, tested, and to be honest, tired. Fear Below is a 2025 Australian film that tries to do something different and original with the form. It’s set in the 1940s and focuses on a van full of stolen gold at the bottom of a large river, with a bull shark circling & darting through the murky water.  The film manages to mix gangster thriller tropes with shark-bound action very well, with a pace that barely lets up. It features moments of real-looking gore attacks, and the shark itself is only fleetingly seen, so it never feels like you're looking at either CGI or a model. It’s been released by Signature Entertainment on VOD, with a Blu-ray appearing shortly. Matthew Holmes- the film's Australian director/ co-writer kindly agreed to an email interview, discussing Fear Below, and his career in general.

M[m]: What are some of your earliest memories of film/ TV? And did any of these inspire you to get into filmmaking?

Matthew: I grew up without a television for much of my childhood, so I didn't watch many TV series or movies. So when I was exposed to movies when I was around 11-12 years old, they had a profound effect on me. I was astounded at how visceral they were. I had a big imagination, and movies were a way of having imagination come to life for everyone to see. Ben Hur, Gallipoli, Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were particularly affecting. I knew from that age that I wanted to make movies.

 

M[m]: Please talk a little bit about how you got into filmmaking, touching on key moments/ projects in your career thus far?

Matthew: I started making home movies with my brother and sister, then moved into stop-motion animation in my teens. I got a job straight out of high school at an animation company called Anifex Pty Ltd. Here, I started at the bottom and worked my way up. I spent years working on TV commercials and short films and learned so much on the job. I moved into serious live action directing with my first feature 'Twin Rivers' (2007) which was self-funded and took me 6 years to complete. I was mentored during its post-production by celebrated Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer, who helped me complete it. Following that, I finally made my second film 'The Legend of Ben Hall' in 2017 after a successful crowdfunding campaign - which started as a short film. It quickly expanded into a feature that was executive produced by Greg Mclean (Wolf Creek). Since then, I've been doing whatever I can to get feature films financed, with varying degrees of success and working very much outside the system here in Australia. I have made two more features since - 'The Cost' (2022) and 'Fear Below' (2025), and am now working on my 5th feature 'The Sundowner'.

M[m]: Please discuss the origins of Fear Below?

Matthew: It began during lockdown when the shoot for my film 'The Cost' had to be postponed, and I was quite bored. Producer Michael Favelle suggested I write a shark film because he said "he could always sell a shark film". Initially, I was very resistant because I felt the shark genre has fallen into a rut and become somewhat of a joke. But I was eager to get a film greenlit, so I dedicated myself to coming up with a shark film concept that I would want to go watch. I've always had an interest in old-school diving gear, and the bull shark is a fascinating shark to me, so I wanted to merge these two interests together. I came up with the initial concept, and then with my co-writer Gregory Moss we began fleshing out the story and characters. Favelle wasn't wrong - he was immediately able to secure pre-sales on the strength of the script alone before any cast were attached.

 

M[m]: Fear Below is somewhat of a game changer in the Sharksploitation genre, with its period setting/ use of copper-headed & leather-booted driving suits, blended in with gangster thriller elements. Was this all set from the beginning of the project?

Matthew: Yes. Everything in the story was there from the outset. I wanted to do something completely different to every other shark film. Setting it in 1946 Australian immediately sets it apart. Having it take place in a river (not the ocean) is also a change, and having the species be a Bull Shark instead of the bog standard Great White adds another point of difference. We created a plot where it gave the characters a reason to keep going back in the water, which is why we came up with the gangsters and their lost gold. My biggest problem with most shark films is that they simply strand their characters in the water and they have to wait to be chomped one by one. They have no agency and the characters are often very forgettable. It was important that the characters and their goals drove the story of 'Fear Below', not the shark. Each character had to be distinct. We also wanted to hearken back to the films of the 80s like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and have 'Fear Below' take on more of a "Spielbergian" vibe.

 

M[m]: What is it that fascinates you about the bull sharks?

Matthew: Probably the fact that bull sharks swim hundreds of miles into freshwater rivers. I learned that fact when I was about 10 years old because I was obsessed with the ocean and wanted to be a professional scuba diver (that was before I discovered filmmaking). Bull sharks are the most aggressive species on the planet - yet they are nowhere as big or scary-looking as the Great White. But they are responsible for more human fatalities and attacks than the Great White. There's nowhere they can't get to, no waters they can't hunt in if they gain access. They're just so damned unstoppable! "Bull" shark really is the perfect name for them. I don't know why more people aren't aware of bull sharks.

M[m]: Talking of the old-time driving suits in the film- how difficult were these to source, and did you actually film inside of them?

Matthew: The old diving suits weren't too difficult to source. I found a professional diver in Victoria who had the Standard Dress Dive gear that he still uses regularly. He became our Diving Consultant - both on the script and with the production.  We used the real suits and helmets when you see the characters suiting up on the shore, but they were extremely heavy and the cast could only wear them for short periods of time. For the underwater sequences however, those were all shot "dry-for-wet" in a regular sound stage dressed like a river bed, so we had light-weight copies of the diving gear made by the costume department. The actors could move around quite easily and safely because there was no water involved.

 

M[m]: Please talk about the film's cast- who came to the project first?, how easy was it to cast each character?, and were there any drastic shifts in the type of actor you wanted for a certain role between script & finished casting?

Matthew: Casting was a long process that began quite early, even before we were greenlit. I had Arthur Angel in my mind for 'Ernie' from when we first started writing, and Jacob Junior Nayinngul was always my first choice for 'Jimmy'. But Clara took some time to find. We offered the role to many Australian actresses, but they turned it down. So we looked at casting options in the UK, and Hermione was the first person we offered it to, as she just seemed like the perfect choice for Clara, and thankfully, she agreed to do it. For the roles of "Bull" Maddock and Janusz, those two casting choices came quite late. In the original script, Janusz was an Italian character and meant to be very large and dominant, while Maddock was leaner and smaller. Jake Ryan was initially considered for Janusz, but then we thought he'd make a great Maddock, and we could give him the nickname "Bull" because Jake is naturally a larger guy. Working with actor Josh McConville, we decided to make Janusz a Polish character so he wasn't a stereotypical Italian gangster, and having an Eastern European helped give the film more of a "Raiders" vibe. The biggest casting surprise was Clayton Watson as 'Bob' - he was originally written as a much older man. Having just worked with Clayton on 'The Cost' - I was keen to see what he could do with it, and he brought a lot of his own ideas and personality to that role.

 

M[m]: Could you please talk about the film's main river location- how did you find/ select it, and did you have to make any adjustments to keep the period setting?

Matthew: We originally started filming on the Murray River in Victoria, but the week we started filming, the whole river flooded very badly, and we lost all our locations. We had to delay the shoot for several weeks and look for another location. At the last minute, myself & my DOP found a lagoon almost 1000kms north in Queensland outside a regional town called Goondiwindi. The lagoon was horseshoe-shaped and was fed by the McIntyre River, and it was actually much safer to film on because it didn't have a current. It was a very remote location, so we didn't have to do anything to make it look "period". It was a very lucky find.

M[m]:  As part of its makeup up Fear Below features some great uneasy atmosphere and moments of effective gore- so have you ever considered making an all-out horror film?

Matthew: I'm not actually a die-hard fan of the horror genre, to be honest, but there are several horror films that I genuinely love because they are simply brilliant movies. I'm glad to hear that the atmosphere and gore in 'Fear Below' is effective - that was certainly our intention, but you never really know if audiences will feel it. I believe the suggestion of something is scarier than actually seeing it, which is why I loved the 'murky river' aspect of the story and we kept the shark so mysterious and only seen in glimpses, because that's how the characters would experience it. Other shark films reveal the shark so vividly and so often that by the time you're halfway through the film - you're desensitised to the shark. It's no more scary than watching a nature documentary, or it's been on-screen too long for special effects to remain convincing.

I do have an all-out horror film in the works, which we hope to start filming soon. It's a big departure from the rest of my work, which is usually drama-based. It was also co-written with Gregory Moss who wrote 'Fear Below' with me. It's not a gory, schlock horror - it's more of a psychological, nerve-wracking story with brief moments of violence. The core idea is highly unsettling because it's ultimately grounded in something that's real, which is what I found appealing in any film I make. That's why I wanted to explore a bull shark in 'Fear Below' and I didn't make it oversized or super smart. We kept it within the realms of reality, as much as possible. 'Fear Below' was a good way to dip my toes into the horror genre, and my previous film 'The Cost' was a good learning curve in crafting tension.

 

M[m]: Can you tell us anything more about the all-out horror film you're working on? ie title, or what it's about?

Matthew: The horror film I'm working on is called 'BlackJack'

 

M[m]: Please talk about the shark it’s self- how much is a model or CGI?

Matthew: The shark is almost 100% a practical effect. We had a full-scale puppet and a 1/4 scale puppet, and various sections of the shark's body that we used on location for our surface attacks and insert shots underwater. In the dry-for-wet studio, we used the full-scale puppet for many shots. The 1/4 scale model was filmed in a small pool and various frame rates to make it appear larger. There are a few shots with some digital augmentation of the puppet shark, but only a few. We didn't use any shark footage in the film either, as it's virtually impossible to film a real bull shark in river water. We wanted to be as "old school" as we could with the shark.

 

M[m]: Please select, say four or five other Sharksploitation pictures you rate?, giving reasons for each choice?

Matthew: JAWS is obviously the great granddaddy of shark films and remains unchallenged. I thought THE SHALLOWS had some great moments and it probably boasts the best-looking digital shark to date. OPEN WATER was a great film because it had that "found footage' vibe and did something different. DEEP BLUE SEA had some great moments and the practical shark looks amazing - but it is let down by very dated CGI. Outside of those films, there's not many other shark films I rate very highly.

 

M[m]:  Excuse my ignorance, but have there been any other Oz shark films, and if so, are these any good?

Matthew: We've made quite a few shark films here in Australia, maybe because it's not hard to film real sharks off our shores. Even the original JAWS got their live shark footage off the coastal waters off Port Lincoln, South Australia. The Australian movie 'The Reef' was quite an effective shark thriller from memory, definitely one of the better entries in the genre. There's been many others made in Australia such as Bait, Open Water 3, The Reef 2: Stalked, Great White... but I won't comment on their quality. I haven't seen them all.  

 

M[m]: Quite a few of your films have had a period setting- what attracted you to this type of setting? And what have been some of the more difficult period details to fulfil?

Matthew: I'm very drawn to stories set in the past because the past is just a fascinating place. Plus I love the visual aesthetics of the clothes, cars and music. Modern technology has made the world feel very contained and small, but stories in the past feel more boundless because access to the world, communication and information was so limited. I find thrillers set in modern times are far more difficult to write because we have mobile phones and most problems can be solved quite quickly with our technology. But in the past, people were at the mercy of nature and circumstances. Stories from the past always feel more visceral to me.

Period films are always challenging when you want to show the scope of the outside world. Clothing and interiors are simple enough, but to really show the larger parts of the world in a period film is where things get really expensive. I wanted to show more of it in 'Fear Below' but unfortunately, the floods meant we lost access to so much that was originally planned for. 

 

M[m]: What are you working on next?

Matthew: I'm currently directing a Western/Drama called 'The Sundowner', which tells the story of a WW1 veteran living as a swagman in 1930s Australia who ends up becoming a fugitive. It's very much a passion project and has quite a different tone to 'Fear Below'.

 

M[m]: What has impacted you in the last six or so months- be it film, music, a book, or art?

Matthew: It's been a pretty lean 6 months for films that have really affected me. But recently I was most impressed with HBO's series 'The Penguin' and like many others I was enthralled by the 'Dune' sequel last year. Strangely, one of the most impressive movies for me of late was 'The Holdovers'. I'm finding myself more drawn to character-driven films than genre or spectacle, and that's more and more reflected in what I'm writing and trying to produce. The most fun for me making 'Fear Below' was directing the actors and seeing these characters come to life. Those are my favourite moments in the film, less so the action and the shark

 

Thanks to Matthew for his time and effort with the interview. Fear Below is now available from Signature Entertainment on VOD, with a DVD release coming shortly.

Photo credits: Gary Compton © 2025 Bronte Pictures