Brainstorm Media has released the trailer for The Bay, because if there’s one thing Hollywood will never stop throwing into the water, it’s more sharks. The latest shark-attack thriller stars Francesca Eastwood (Queen of the Ring) and follows two best friends forced to fight for survival after their tour boat sinks in a shark sanctuary.

The Bay

The film comes from writer/director Phil Volken (Dead Sea). “I’ve made several films set on the open sea, and The Bay is the culmination of my experiences to date – with my crack team of regular collaborators, the movie is finely and expertly honed to maximize the combined fears of the ocean, the unknown, sharks and ultimately, just how cold-blooded nature can be – specifically human nature,” he said in a statement. “I’m delighted with the scale and performances we’ve delivered onscreen. The Bay’s going to completely immerse and terrify audiences worldwide!“

In addition to Eastwood, the film also stars Alexander Wraith, Dani Oliveros, and Ta’imua. It will be released in select theaters and on demand on July 17.

Shark Movies

Although shark movies existed long before Jaws, the massive success of Steven Spielberg’s classic helped turn them into a genre all their own, one that Hollywood has been circling ever since. And really, who can blame them? There’s something irresistibly primal about the idea of being stranded in open water with something you can’t reason with just below the surface. Unfortunately, for every scrappy B-movie gem, there are plenty of shark flicks that belong at the bottom of the ocean.

This year alone, our resident shark-attack movie fanatic, Tyler Nichols, has already reviewed three entries in the genre: Renny Harlin’s Deep Water, Netflix’s Thrash, and Chum, the latter of which he singled out for its dreadful AI-driven VFX.

“Chum utilizes footage of real sharks, but has a hard time keeping the shark type being shown consistent. Then it mixes that real footage with some of the most insane FX I have ever witnessed,” he wrote in his review. “It goes from just casually mixing footage together to a moment that feels straight out of the Shark Attack franchise. The filmmakers clearly used AI for its post-production, and it makes every attack look awful. There’s a strange floaty quality to most of the victims, and they seem to just put their limbs in the shark’s mouth. It may be passable at a glance when using the real shark footage, but it goes off the rails when a shark is doing something that they don’t have archived footage for.“