An island vacation takes a turn for the worst when a great white shark targets Jessie (Nicky Whelan) and her friends. As they begin to get picked off by the shark, Jessie teams up with the sea captain (Trace Adkins) for a chance at survival.

Jeff Fahey and Shane West also star in Maneater. Rounding out the cast are Randall J. Bacon, Deena Bacon, Kaley Bowler, Zoe Cipres, Kim Delonghi, Porscha Coleman, Alex Farnham, and more. It’s written and directed by Justin Lee.

“It’s every few years a shark movie is made that has an enormous following, and people love them,” commented Whelan, “there’s all these different types of shark movies, and one came across my lap and was offered to me, and I was like, ‘we’re going to give this a crack.’ And then I threw myself into the independent filmmaking of shooting a shark movie in Hawaii.”

Making a Shark Movie like Maneater

A lot of Maneater takes place, of course, in reach of a shark in a boat and on water, which is no easy feat with a short window to shoot of “18 days on a very small budget,” as Whelan explained, and that’s including the use of a mechanical shark.

“They advise you not to do that when making a shark movie. The conditions are insane, we were shooting on this crazy little beach just outside of the airport, the water conditions are changing and the tide, with the sound coming across… the water was choppy because we had a team of people carrying out the mechanical shark into the water, even though we ended up using CGI shots throughout the movie as well… the challenges we came up against, right down to like a personal one of just swimming in those waters and getting exhausted and having limited time, and the heat. This movie really kicked everybody’s [expletive] in a wonderful way.”

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Mechanical Shark in Maneater

One of the reasons why a mechanical shark is advised against is because of all the hard work that is required to execute it, not to mention its sheer size. In Maneater, you can see it being used in some shots, while in others, the shark is CGI.

“It was huge… and you have puppeteers on set who go under the water and control this thing. I think one of the crew had spoken to someone that had worked on Jaws originally, and they were like, ‘don’t do it… it’s a lot of hard work,’ And, you know, Justin was really wanting to make an authentic old school shark movie, and like I said we did end up using CGI… there are some shots using the mechanical.”

Although not all of the shark seen in the movie is mechanical, Whelan commented that she does hope fans at home “press pause… it should be interesting to see how they feel about the movie making,” referring to its use, “especially the real diehard shark movie fans, to see what they think of it and how we shot it with our budget.”

Working with Justin Lee, Trace Adkins, and Shane West

“Justin, he’s really relaxed about such a chaotic set, very chill, which made it really good for us actors that were sort of out of breath, panicking, and losing our minds,” said Whelan.

As for working with Adkins and West, Whelan commented that she adores them. “I adore Shane’s great acting, and then you’ve got Trace Adkins who is just an absolute bull at the top of his field in music with such incredible energy. He’s a really cool dude in real life and that’s kind of his character. And I feel like he could save the day… and he brought that to his character… I think he was perfect for this role.”

The cast turns in solid performances, especially when considering the minimal rehearsal time. Though according to Whalen, “that’s actually the fun part about acting sometimes, is sitting down with these actors, and you don’t know what their take is, and you don’t know how they’re going to be. You can know what the idea of the scene is but not have the energy of someone… you don’t know how you’re going to react to it… even though we have a storyline. With Trace, I sort of sat with him and I saw how he was rolling straightaway and immediately was like, ‘I’m going to play off that,” and it was a very safe space to work in. That’s the fun part of being an actor.”


Saban Films will release Maneater in theaters, on demand, and digital on August 26, 2022.