Steven Spielberg’s Jaws kickstarted a wave of shark-based movies, a trend which has never gone out of fashion. Since Jaws the movie industry has been home to a multitude of stories centred around sharks, covering almost every scenario possible. From the silliness of Sharknado, to the real-life inspired story in Open Water, to the truly bizarre Shark Exorcist, there is no end to the popularity of shark films. The latest filmmaker to dip a toe into the water is director Hayley Easton Street with Something in the Water.
The film follows Meg (Hiftu Quasem) who attends the dream destination wedding in the Caribbean of an old friend, Lizzie (Lauren Lyle), with her ex-partner Kayla (Natalie Mitson) and friends Ruth (Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart) and Cam (Nicole Rieko Setsuko). However, when a boat trip goes horribly wrong, the five friends soon find themselves fighting for their lives, as well their relationships, as they brave the shark-infested waters.
Something in the Water marks Hayley Easton Street’s feature debut as a director. Given the logistical headache that filming in water can provide, it is a bold move for a first-time director, but one that has paid off. Something in the Water is available to own now, and with Halloween season fast approaching, we spoke with Hayley Easton Street to uncover more about the perils of filming at sea and how this female focused story shakes up the standard shark tale.
Ever since Steven Spielberg made Jaws, the shark movie has been a popular subgenre of films. What do you think it is about these stories that people find fascinating?
I love Jaws. It’s the pinnacle of shark movies. I think it’s one of those primal fears. For me, if you were just stranded in the middle of the ocean, that’s scary enough. That feeling of loss of control and anything can happen, and the fear of what you can’t see under the water and knowing that you’re in something else is territory… that goes back to the days when we felt we were prey. It’s something that will never probably go away, the fear of something coming and killing us and eating us.
Do you have any favourite shark films other than Jaws?
One of my favourites is The Shallows. Jaws is always it for me, but The Shallows is another one that I really like. That’s really great because it’s just her stuck out there on this rock, but she’s so brilliant in it.
With there being so many other shark films available, how did you and your writer work on Something in the Water to make sure that it stood out?
Cat Clarke, the writer, had already done a pretty good job. Obviously when you’re out in the middle of water and you’ve got a shark at play, there’s only a certain amount of things that are going to happen, and they are tried and tested. But the thing that she did that was very different, that everyone loved about it, was it is a shark film, but also a story about these amazing women. These five friends who are these really strong characters. It’s about their friendship. It’s a friendship movie where they happen to get stuck in the water and there are sharks.
You see so many of these shark films where the characters are a little bit throw away, and you’re not fully invested in them, or you don’t particularly like, them or whatever it is, whereas this felt like this really brilliant group of friends arguing, and then making up, and coming to a realisation about what’s important.
One thing that I enjoyed was that typically people stranded at sea with sharks around tend to be a mix of men and women. Here there are no men to be found, how do you think that this changes the dynamic from what audiences have seen before?
You’re so used to seeing these films where there are, like you said, a mix of people. There’s probably always someone that would happily sacrifice their friend for themselves, whereas this lot are completely different. There’s self-sacrifice and they care about each other so much, and even though they might bicker and argue, they really love each other. The emotion that they have about what’s going on isn’t just about them. It’s not a selfish thing, it is about their friends.
It’s also nice to see a group of women being portrayed as capable, they don’t need a male character to swoop in and help them.
And not just in the cast either…I’m so used to working – in my previous career as a visual effects artist – on movies with male directors. I’ve never worked with a female director. Then when we did this film, we had – and we were just choosing the best people – we ended up with this really heavily female crew. It just felt brilliant to do that. It felt like that was really fitting for the film as well, these strong women all just out there, like you say, you don’t see that very often and it felt like we were actually doing it while we’re making the film as well.
I imagine that filming in and around water can be a logistical nightmare, what challenges did you face?
God, we had everything. We shot it in the Dominican Republic, almost all of our scenes are outside; we only had a couple of interior scenes so we were at the behest of the weather. We had tropical storms. We had a hurricane in prep. The water conditions were really difficult. We shot some scenes in the open water, some in the tank, quite a lot in the tank, which we then extended the water with visual effects. But when we were out in the ocean, it’s very unpredictable, very low visibility, very difficult to get days when we could achieve what we wanted to achieve.
Honestly, there was always something. At the beach location we were getting eaten alive by sand flies at dawn, and mosquitoes at dusk. There were viruses going through the crew, I was taken out for a couple of days. Because we were a little bit removed out there in the Dominican Republic we had to bring in kit, and some stuff didn’t turn up or things that we’d break and we couldn’t replace, heat stroke and all sorts of nonsense going on. It felt like every day was a massive challenge.
The water slows you down just generally. There was a particular day when we went out into the open water and we had permission to film in a certain area, and there was an 8ft swell. We had all these boats with camera crew, cast and make-up, a big group of us going out and honestly I’d say it’s almost everyone apart from me, and about three other people, were throwing up over the side of both. So it was carnage, just horrific seasickness, but we just had to keep going.
That sounds awful. I imagine it’s harder as well because this was an independent production. A big studio movie can put a pin in it and come back another day, but as an independent film you have no choice but to get what you can, wherever you can.
Exactly. We were on a very, very tight schedule. It was a challenge. If everything had gone smoothly, it was still a challenge to get all the shots for the film. We were rewriting bits as we went. It was frankly a miracle that we got the film.
And Something in the Water is your first feature as a director, talk about trial by fire…
I know. It was exactly that. I don’t know anyone else that’s done something like that for the first feature. It had everything, visual effects, special effects, all these stunts. It felt good to do that as my first one, even though it was extraordinarily difficult to pull off. Now I just feel, going to something else that this feels easy now because that one had it all.
Why do you hope that audiences take a chance on Something in the Water?
I think there are a lot of shark films around. It’s a quite saturated market really, especially recently. But this one is completely different to all the other ones. It’s almost like a shark film for people that don’t normally watch shark films in a way, or a shark film for – I don’t think it’s particularly for men or women – but I think it is a shark film that will appeal to a lot of women. You can really invest in these characters, and it’s funny and you can kind of be behind these brilliant women.
IMDB lists your next project as The Climb. Is there anything you can share about that project?
So yeah, I’m working on The Climb at the moment. We’re in the second week of prep now. That’s one that I’ve written. It’s been something that I’ve been developing for about five years and we’ve just got off the ground. It’s based on something that happened in 2013. There were six women who climbed The Shard for Greenpeace to protest against shale drilling in the Arctic. It’s a little bit like a heist. I’ve written about these great women who come from all over the world and they plan this action and they climb The Shard. Five of them made it to 850 feet and couldn’t carry on and one of them, Viola, who was a Polish industrial climber, climbed alone to the top of the Shard to fly the Greenpeace flag. It’s a great story. It was on the news here in the UK for a day but I don’t think it travelled particularly and it’s such an inspiring story. So yeah, they’re still stunts and visual effects and stuff to do, it’s actually quite a complicated shoot, but it’s very exciting.
Something in the Water is available now to buy and rent from digital platforms and to own on Blu-ray & DVD.
