Australian WWII soldiers are stuck on a raft and surrounded by a shark, in writer-director Kiah Roche-Turner’s tight and tense Beast of War, presented as part of Fantastic Fest 2025. Now on Shudder in January 2026.
Beast of War is a tight, little exercise in building terror and shock. A handful of men, a make-shift raft, low rations, high tensions… and a shark. Kiah Roche-Turner, writing and directing, again gets the most out of a low budget after Wyrmwood and Sting, with another amazing creature feature.
It’s World War II, and a company of Australian men meets for the first time to train in the jungle. While we know the chomping can’t happen yet, Beast of War being a shark movie and all, but the extended sequence allows a building of tension through the personalities, prejudices, and hang-ups of the men before they are forced to fight with anything but one another. Of course, we need personal conflicts; just men versus shark would empty the film. Anyone who has spent time with a slew of military personalities (and I can attest as a former Navy sailor), these kids are going to clash immediately.
At the center is Leo, an Aboriginal soldier with a history of the sea and sharks. A solid hero, Mark Coles Smith lends an intense likability to his slightly closed-off person. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew looks interchangeable; all White guys of the same build with short dark hair. In the back half of the film, while laid out, wet, and in the dark, it was hard to tell who was who by look, only in action.
It’s all a great setup to care and understand when they end up stranded. On the way to the front of the Pacific Theater, their ship is sunk in the Timor Sea (northwest Australia). The survivors are stuck on a make-shift raft, made from the side of the sunken boat, with just a handful of resources, also bobbing along (sequences to get said items to them are top notch). The blood and bluster, of course, attracts a massive and scarred great white shark. A practical shark, the vast majority of the time! Hell yeah!
How will the men survive? The struggle to live is filled with a series of thrilling, edge-of-the-seat sequences. It’s surprisingly just how much is mined from the small location, people, resources, and shark. The sequences are shot with a controlled gusto, moving in and about to push the heartbeat of action and horror. The cinematography by Mark Wareham really brings home, pushing in with fantastic lighting and color use to keep us tight to the men. The whole is shrouded in fog, and whatever lights are around are diffused with a giallo-like color. Atmosphere swims in the deep as blood swirls in the water. The blood is plentiful, and for practical effects lovers, the wounds, innards, and overall gore look gnarly and nasty. Very impressive.
I appreciate how close the team keeps Beast of War. The men have to pull some feats and pull traps, weapons, and survival elements from what little resources they have, but it never stretches to become silly. Beast of War is a serious film, taking the action directly and without irony. It may be serious, but it’s also fist-bumping and utterly thrilling as the cat-and-mouse of sailor-and-shark plays out. Yes, I couldn’t help but quote Jaws at parts. But in a positive correlation. You can’t make a shark movie without the audience thinking of the quintessential (Quint-essential?) Speilberg film (cue Quint’s Indianapolis speech), but any comparisons, references, or “smile you sonuvaaBOOM” are done positively. 
Beast of War is a beast of a film, a biting shark action-horror with awesome and gory sequences with actual terror. Kiah-Roche Turner delivers a hellish, thrilling new shark feature. Beast of War is presented through Fantastic Fest, running September 18th through 25th.
As of Jan 16, 2026 Beast of War is on Shudder.
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.