Fear Below Review: Gold, Gunfire and Jaws in Post-War Australia

In the dusty aftermath of 1946, Australia’s rivers carry more than debris—here, they conceal a sunken van brimming with stolen gold. Feverish gangsters in sharp suits dispatch a motley crew of salvage divers into murky waters, armed with dragging lines, bulky helmets and the grim prospect of lethal jaws (and not just those of the human variety).

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill shark thriller. By placing ruthless crime figures alongside a bull shark—an animal equally at home in fresh water—the film interrogates human avarice against nature’s indifference. Our protagonists, Clara, Ernie and Jimmy, wage a two-front struggle: wresting treasure from the riverbed while fending off mob violence onshore.

Period details abound: weathered diving gear that creaks like a haunted warship, pick-up trucks splattered with outback dust, sweat-stained fedoras casting wide shadows. The bull shark lurks off-screen for long stretches, its absences more unsettling than its sudden appearances.

Here, greed and survival collide beneath rippling surfaces. The river’s depths become a mirror for post-war anxieties—scarcity, loyalty tested by profit, the uneasy dance between human ingenuity and primeval force. Tension ripples above and below the waterline, promising that neither gold nor gunfire will guarantee escape when fins are in play.

Currents of Tension: Story and Tempo

The film eases us into 1946 with deliberate calm—as if we’ve stumbled onto a faded newsreel. Ernie Morgan’s dive outfit feels like a scrappy holdover from wartime, Clara Bennett’s eager competence hints at a generation learning to repurpose trauma, and Jimmy’s patient river knowledge evokes ancestral ties (and a quiet rebuke to colonial extraction). When Dylan Maddock strolls in, sharp suit gleaming, the promise of sunken gold rouses everyone from inertia—yet the first descent is interrupted by barely a ripple, a suggestion that something far more ancient awaits below.

Tension thickens like silt in the murky depths. Outdated diving helmets groan with every breath, each hiss a reminder of vulnerability. On land, Maddock’s curt deadlines and offhand threats—“You find that van, or you won’t walk away”—contrast the underwater unease. Cuts between the two worlds lengthen the wait for carnage; you find yourself oddly grateful for a moment of gangster grandstanding while wondering whether claustrophobia or bullets will prove deadlier.

When the bull shark finally appears, it erupts into view with a ferocity jarring against the slow build. Visibility vanishes in seconds, so every death kick, every flailing arm counts (budget constraints or not, the practical-puppet attack packs a genuine wallop). Back onshore, Jacob Junior Nayinggul’s Jimmy finds himself caught not just in jaws but in a moral crossfire—gunfire and sharkbite converge in a sequence that feels torn between classic creature-feature spectacle and a hard-boiled crime finale.

A final underwater showdown tests both oxygen and nerve. Clara’s quick thinking repurposes a diving weight into a makeshift spear. One last lunge. One final gasp.

Slow stretches of atmospheric build-up alternate with sudden jolts of violence. Short sentences punctuate the shark hunts. Longer, winding descriptions suit the gangster scheming. Scene transitions land with unexpected tilts—a gliding underwater shot followed by a jump-cut to a handgun muzzle. The result is a heartbeat both steady and arrhythmic, a pulse that leaves you gasping for narrative—and literal—air.

Headwaters of the Heart: Character Currents

Clara Bennett emerges as more than just a savvy diver (a rare commodity in a male-dominated post-war milieu). Her ambition reads like a reaction to societal displacement—women scrambling for agency after global conflict. She tackles each descent with deliberate precision, yet her steely resolve fractures when faced with betrayal. One moment she’s the archetypal go-getter; the next, she flinches at gunfire, revealing vulnerability beneath the hardhat.

Ernie Morgan carries the weight of wartime memories in every creak of his diving rig. His alcoholism isn’t mere affectation but a symptom of survivor’s guilt (a submerged narrative that surfaces in his protective instincts for the crew). Caught between lining his pockets and keeping Clara and Jimmy alive, he embodies the post-conflict moral tug-of-war, where profit can feel as vital as loyalty.

Jimmy’s intimate rapport with the riverbank offers a striking counterpoint: Indigenous knowledge vs. colonial rapacity. He navigates currents with ancestral assurance, reminding us that this landscape predates any stolen gold. His quiet composure—shaken only by threats to his home waters—provides the film’s emotional fulcrum.

On dry land, Dylan Maddock’s polished menace cloaks a deeper avarice. His civility is a veneer so thin it shatters at the first sign of resistance. His associates mirror him: the enforcer’s brusque efficiency and the rookie’s hesitant compliance underscore a criminal ecosystem built on fear.

Bob the fisherman strides in as the rugged “fixer” trope, his grizzled exterior promising salvation (though salvation often carries a price). A lone police officer interrupts the clandestine salvage—an almost comic deus ex machina—yet injects a dose of institutional accountability into the greedscape.

Alliance and animosity shift like river eddies. One moment, Clara trusts Ernie implicitly; the next, she questions his choices. Jimmy’s solidarity with the crew clashes with the gangster’s leverage. Through these evolving power plays, the film crafts a microcosm of post-war tension—human ties stretched taut between survival and avarice.

Aesthetic Depths: Crafting Period Horror

The production design summons 1946 with meticulous care: heavy brass helmets clank like battlefield relics, while battered diving suits bear scuffs that whisper of past trauma (and last week’s miscalculated descent). Gangster threads—pinstriped jackets, fedoras tilted just so—anchor the film in post-war street theatre. Even the rusted pickup trucks and weathered riverfront shacks feel curated, as if the entire outback has been repurposed into a living museum exhibit of moral decay.

Underwater, the cinematography adopts a palette of murky greens and sepia-browns—what one might call “silt noir.” Visibility collapses into tight frames, lending each breath a claustrophobic weight. By contrast, surface shots open into wide vistas: dusty roads recede under a blazing sky, reminding us how small humans feel when pitted against both land and sea. Handheld camera work trembles during dives, injecting palpable unease, while static setups onshore allow tension to accumulate like storm clouds.

Rather than CGI, the bull shark emerges as a practical marvel: gnarled teeth dripping with menace, hazy puppet eyes that somehow feel sentient. Dry-for-wet lighting tricks—flickering shafts through murk—sell every ripple and shadow as authentic. When jaws snap, blood blossoms in the water with tangible viscosity; the currents seem to recoil, as if the river itself objects.

Editing stitches these worlds together with surgical precision. Cross-cuts splice the divers’ silent agony to Maddock’s clipped threats, generating a diastolic pulse of dread. Occasional jump-cuts jolt the viewer, then lingering takes let dread hang in the air (or water) like toxic fallout.

Color grading contrasts sunlit exteriors—where gold glitters in daylight—with the inky depths where treasure and terror share the same silent realm. Spotlighting the shark only in fleeting bursts amplifies every reveal: when fins slice the gloom, the shock feels like an electroshock to the subconscious.

Echoes Beneath the Surface

Underwater, the soundtrack is nearly alien: each exhaled breath crackles through brass helmets, muted bubbles slip past like whispered secrets, and the distant groan of corroded gear feels like a sotto voce admission of dread. Onshore, rippling river currents mingle with cicadas’ chorus, punctuated by the occasional metallic clank of gold crates—an aural reminder that human greed resonates as loudly as nature’s whispers.

Angela Little’s string motifs thread tension through both realms: slithering cellos signal the shark’s approach, while staccato violins underscore gangster machinations. Period-appropriate jazz stabs—piano trills and brushed snares—evoke 1940s parlors, offering ironic respite before a dive sequence.

Silence proves its own instrument. Seconds stretch into eternity as divers hover on the riverbed—no music, no ambient hum—only heartbeats and the faintest sluice of water. Then, without warning, a sudden sound bridge yanks us to gunfire on the bank.

Each crunch of weighted boots, each clang of shifting bullion, each off-screen coin’s tinkle adds texture. Together, they compose a soundscape that digs deep into cultural memory—where terror, history and human avarice converge in the liminal space between sight and sound.

Currents of Dread: Atmosphere & Suspense

The film opens with a terse prologue: a van careens off the riverbank (a nod to post-war recklessness) and disappears beneath opaque waters. That initial sighting of the shark’s fin—half-hidden, half-ominous—sets a tone of perpetual unease.

Murky depths become character in their own right. Every bubble, every corroded rivet on outdated dive gear feels loaded with peril. Isolation seeps into the frame; even radio silence carries weight. (Imagine wartime blackout drills—but underwater.)

On land, gangster swagger translates into palpable menace. A curt machine-gun threat evokes authoritarian echoes of recent global conflict. Then, beneath the surface, the shark’s unpredictable lunge reminds us that primal forces ignore human hierarchies.

Tension ratchets upward through gradual reveals: a flash of serrated teeth, a rippling silhouette. Fuel gauges tick down like a bomb’s fuse, and Maddock’s impatience looms like a gathering storm.

Every gear malfunction, each hiss of escaping air, each mask-fogged glance amplifies diver anxiety. The threat of betrayal simmers—gangster double-crosses hidden beneath polite smiles, mirroring broader mistrust in a society rebuilding itself.

Pacing swings between extended hushes and sudden shock. Just when you brace for respite, a jump-cut yanks you into chaos. Cliffhangers slice scenes like shattered glass, ensuring you exhale only when the credits roll.

Symbols in the Deep: Themes & Resonance

The bull shark emerges as primal arbit­er—its silent prowl beneath murky waters reminding us that nature remains indifferent to human scheming. Greed gleams in stolen gold; morality sinks when bullion outshines basic empathy (a delicious irony for those who risk life and limb chasing wealth).

Ernie’s heavy dive rig mirrors the weight of combat memories—each descent reinflates submerged trauma. The riverbed becomes his personal archive, where echoes of gunfire blend with distant ripples.

Through Jimmy’s calm command of currents, the film nods to enduring Indigenous ties—an unspoken critique of extractive ambition. Gold bars glitter like colonial spoils; the divers’ quest reads as allegory for resource plunder across time.

Under pressure, ethics fracture. Clara’s split-second choice—save a comrade or claim the prize—poses a fundamental question: when does survival eclipse solidarity? Heroism here is a fluid concept, shifting with each breath of scarcity. In this crucible of water and want, the movie invites us to ponder whether human desire can ever coexist with the silent laws that govern the deep.

Full Credits

Director: Matthew Holmes

Writers: Matthew Holmes, Gregory Moss

Producers: Michael Favelle, Blake Northfield

Cast: Hermione Corfield, Jake Ryan, Josh McConville, Jacob Junior Nayinggul, Arthur Angel, Maximillian Johnson, Clayton Watson, Kevin Dee, Sam Parsonson, Will Fletcher, Tom Beaurepaire

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Peter Szilveszter

Editors: Sue Schweikert, Matt Villa

Composer: Angela Little