Director – Charles Robert Carner, Screenplay – J.D. Feigelson & Chris Mack, Producer – Mitch Engel, Photography – Michael Goi, Music – Louis Febre & Dominic Messinger, Visual Effects – Aurum Digital Entertainment (Supervisor – Hitoshi Inoue), Special Effects Supervisor – Roly Jansen, Animatronic Shark Design – Dennis Beechy & Rob Carlisle, Production Design – Johnny Breedt. Production Company – New Line Television.
Cast
Lou Diamond Phillips (John Sanders), Kristy Swanson (Dr Kelli Raymond), Coolio (Ice), Langley Kirkwood (Brett van Ryan), Jaimz Woolvett (Jerry Collins), Rob Botin (Emery Broussard), Gideon Emery (Gene Bradley), Dennis Haskins (Captain Dale Landry), Charles Duma (Hank Ellis), Clive Scott (Grandpa Gautreau), Nicolas Andrews (Andre Gautreau), Tumisho K. Masha (Rick)
Plot
John Sanders is a former oil rig worker who operates a tourist boat on the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana, but is struggling to keep afloat financially. He is then approached by his ex-wife Dr Kelli Raymond, who wants his help to conduct an environmental impact report on an oil rig built on the river. John agrees to take the job because he needs the money. As the same time, the sheriff’s department warns of a bull shark that has been attacking along the river. Meanwhile, a drug dealer in the Virgin Islands despatches two men to the Atchafalaya to retrieve a stash of money that has been lost at the bottom of the river. Kelli’s expedition, the hired thugs, oil rig workers and shark all collide with deadly results.
Red Water was one of the killer shark films made in the early 2000s. This was the period after Jaws (1975) had been a massive success and led to a series of sequels and copycats. This initial wave died away by the end of the 1980s, before the late 1990s/early 2000s revived the killer shark in a series of B-budget offerings. A few years after this, the killer shark film would take a turn for the gonzo with the likes of Shark in Venice (2008), Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009) and the while Sharknado (2013) phenomenon after which it the genre was deluged by a tsunami of deliberately ridiculous titles, but Red Water comes before all of that took off. (For a more detailed listing see Killer Shark Films).
Red Water was made by New Line Cinema’s television arm, which had originally been set up to make Freddy’s Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street – The Series (1988-9) and produced several other series based on New Line film properties, as well as a revival of The Twilight Zone (2002-3), before being absorbed by Warner Brothers in 2008. This was one of the few tv movies they made, although enjoyed most of its life in video release.
Lou Diamond Phillips and Kristy Swanson
Red Water is not quite a killer shark film as such. Well it is, it is just that the shark doesn’t play that important a part in the story. The majority of the action takes place around the river and oil rig. It is more of a treasure hunting story where a good deal of the action involves the boatload of thugs as Coolio pull guns on Lou Diamond Phillips and Kristy Swanson and demand they go diving for the treasure, as well as action set around the oil rig, which naturally gets to be blown up at the climax. The film features only brief appearances from the shark. Certainly, the Cajun culture setting that we get in the early scenes is an unusual one to incorporate into a killer shark film (even if the film was actually shot in South Africa as opposed to Louisiana).
Lou Diamond Phillips and Kristy Swanson appear to only be there for the paycheques but at least give serviceable performances. This was the period where the rapper Coolio was going through trying to make it as an actor in films such as The Convent (2000), Dracula 2000 (2004) and Pterodactyl (2005). He seems to be having a certain amount of fun here playing the thug, while being insulting by being called ‘Vanilla Ice’ and ‘Ice Cube.’
