PLOT: Follows best friends Maddie and Trish as they find themselves trapped in a remote lagoon with the dangerous killer whale named Ceto.
REVIEW: Outside of 1977’s Orca there is a severe lack of killer whale movies out there. They are the Apex Predator’s of the ocean after all so they seem like the perfect candidate for an aquatic thriller. With their attacks on various boats over the years, I always expected some films to spring up and we’re finally getting one with Killer Whale. Unfortunately, this one can barely stay afloat and fails to provide anything worthwhile.
I’ve always really liked Virginia Gardner as she’s been a pretty consistent presence in horror. Her character Maddie loses her hearing in the film’s opening, where her boyfriend loses his life in an apparent robbery. Her best friend Trish (Mel Jarnson) takes her to the tropics and they end up getting trapped in a lagoon with a deadly orca. While there is no documented case of an Orca killing a human being in the wild, the lagoon makes the orca think its still in captivity, so all bets are off. We get a few kills, but they’re pretty tame, with the biggest one already being spoiled in the trailer.
Despite the fact that the whale being trapped in the lagoon is a key part of the story, they completely gloss over how it got there. It goes from being in captivity one moment and trapped in a lagoon the next. I’m not even sure you can move a whale that quickly and it seems unnecessary to make the events so rapidfire. This lack of logic is prevalent throughout and you can poke holes in damn near every aspect of the story. They even add drama between the characters because apparently being trapped on a rock with a killer Orca surrounding them wasn’t dramatic enough.
The whale’s appearance is pretty bad most of the time, but there are moments where it appears to be a physical prop that actually looks pretty decent. One small detail that I really liked is that the whale dorsal fin is flopped to one side, as is common with whales in captivity. I won’t deny that the floppy fin does make for an unintentionally funny visual. Especially with how static it is in the water. But I’ll at least give the filmmakers props for getting that element right.
It’s just really hard to look past the very bad special FX constantly on display. It always blows my mind when filmmakers decide to make a movie without having the proper budget for it. It results in some really bad green screen that dominates so much of the runtime. Why film in such a beautiful location if you’re just going to replace the background? It also means the whale itself isn’t very intimidating, as it never looks realistic enough. It doesn’t help that a whale just doesn’t elicit the same level of fear as the maw of a Great White.
There are some obvious parallels with Killer Whale and The Shallows, with our leads being stranded on a big rock with a killer animal in the waters around them. But that’s really where the comparisons end. While that film had a ticking clock with the rising tide, everything that happens to the two leads is completely brought upon themselves. The whale just acts when they’re in the water, and even then, it’s inconsistent. Giving a little bit of urgency could have helped elevate the thrills.
It’s best not to take Killer Whale too seriously and just go along for the ride. Even then, outside of the good performances from Gardner and Jarnson, there really isn’t much here to latch onto. It’s so melodramatic at points and the whale doesn’t feel like the force of nature that it should. It doesn’t help that it just kind of comes and goes, depending on what the story needs at a specific moment. And with some of the worst green screen I’ve ever seen in a major release, I was more distracted than invested.
Killer Whale is In Theaters, On Demand and On Digital January 16, 2026.
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