Fear Below — Fear Below( VOD/ DVD)
Fear Below is a 2025 Australian film that tries to do something different and original with the tried, tested, and to be honest, tired Sharksploitation genre. The film is set in the year 1946 and focuses on a van full of stolen gold at the bottom of a large river, with a bull shark circling & darting through the murk of the water. Here from Signature Entertainment is a digital first(May 19), and later DVD release(June 6) of the picture.
Fear Below was directed/ co-written by Australian filmmaker Matthew Holmes, who started his career as a stop-motion animator. To date, he has four other feature-length films to his name, these take in heist comedy The Biscuit Effect (2005), depression set coming-of-age drama Twin Rivers (2007), 18th-century-set bush-ranger-focused western The Legend of Ben Hall (2017), and tense present-day set thriller The Cost (2022).
The film has a nicely taut & tight runtime of one hour and twenty-five minutes, with it jumping straight into the intrigue/ tension, as we see a van loaded up with wooden crates full of stolen gold bullion making its way through the nighttime Oz countryside. The van hits a pothole- the back doors fly open, and some boxes fall out, the boxes are quickly put back in, and they get underway again- but then the van swerves, goes down a slight dip, and splashes/sinks into a large/ wide lake.
Following the van is hard-faced/ smartly dressed gangster Dylan 'Bull' Maddock (Jake Ryan) and his scar-faced/moustached henchman Janusz(Josh McConville). As you can imagine, they are none too pleased- with Maddock bloody dispatching the van's driver in the blink of an eye, leaving the younger Irish co-driver, Shaun(Maximillian Johnson)- shocked, but ready to help the pair get the stolen gold back.
It's quickly decided they need to get a diver, instead of a crane, so as not to arouse too much attention, so they go to a local dive company, which consists of middle-aged, drinking-a-bit-too-much owner Erine (Arthur Angle), twenty-something blue-eyed & blond Clara (Hermione Corfield), and aboriginal ex-serviceman Jimmy (Jacob Junior Nayinggul). Due to bad decisions and Erine’s drinking, the company is on the point of shutting down- so they accept the job of diving for the van- without knowing what’s in it, or who Maddock really is.
The film succeeds in mixing gangster thriller tropes with shark-bound action very well, with the pace barely letting up. As we move from riverside set tension & gun play, though to down in the murky depths thriller- as the lead booted dives trying to retrieve the gold, and avoid the suddenly darting & attacking of the bull shark. Added into the mix, we have a curious-what’s-going-on cop, and a ragged/ bearded shark hunter.
The whole thing is well acted & well scripted- with the viewer being pulled along by the plot's twists and turns, and you do truly care about/ despise the characters. There are moments of real-looking gore/ shark attacks, and the shark itself is only fleetingly seen, so it never feels like you're looking at either CGI or a model.
All in all, I was very impressed with Fear Below- as it’s a great thriller/ action film, as well as an original/ distinctive take on the Sharksploitation form. I reviewed the film as a digital screener- but I’ll be tracking down a physical copy too, as the film certainly stands as one of my unexpected highlights of 2025.