When I first saw that Lionsgate was releasing a new killer whale movie in the year of our lord 2026, I was instantly on board thanks to my love of sharksploitation. While they’re very different animals—the orca is a mammal, after all—it’s still a pretty gnarly creature. The killer whale earns its name not only because it sits atop the marine food chain, but because of its well-documented appetite for seals, sea lions, penguins, sharks, and even other whales.
Directed by Jo-Anne Brechin, Killer Whale follows Maddie (Virginia Gardner), who, after surviving a terrible tragedy, is brought to the Andaman Sea Islands in Thailand by her best friend Trish (Mel Jarnson) a year later. They’re there to enjoy the surf and sun—and to visit Maddie’s favorite orca, Ceto, who lives at World of Orca, a marine park on the island. Ceto has spent 22 years in captivity and was relocated to Thailand after an incident in the U.S., when her calf was taken from her and she lashed out at one of her young trainers.
Shortly after Maddie arrives, Ceto attacks a janitor and is set free, ultimately becoming stranded in the same remote atoll—essentially an enclosed lake within the ocean—that Maddie and Trish decide to explore with a handsome young islander.
As a film, Killer Whale feels like a mash-up of Gardner’s previous Fall and The Shallows. Both women end up stranded atop a rock in the middle of the atoll, with Ceto hunting them and no way to contact the outside world. The predator-and-prey setup hits just as hard as the melodrama, as shocking revelations surface between the two friends while time ticks away as does their hope of escaping.
Fall is, to me, one of the most underrated horror films of the past five years, and Gardner is just as compelling here, walking yet another emotional tightrope while fighting to survive. Mel Jarnson matches that energy with an understated performance that proves more layered than expected in her take on the PhD-holding influencer “girlie.” By the third act, both women are nearly stripped bare—figuratively and almost literally—perched on a rock while a killer whale waits beneath them. It’s a pressure-cooker finale that had me holding my breath.
Ceto herself appears to be a blend of practical effects and CGI, and for the most part she works. That’s really the true bar for entry in these films: how believable is your creature? Here, it largely passes, thanks in no small part to the committed performances of the two leads and the extreme circumstances surrounding them they render believable.
Killer Whale is a solid slice of genre filmmaking that works not only on a visceral level but an emotional one as well. It understands the hallmarks and tropes of the creature feature and delivers on their promises while offering up fresh melodrama that kept me transfixed from start to finish. You may come for the killer whale, but you stay for the drama—and even I was caught off guard by the film’s shocking revelation. That final twist adds real complexity to the women’s relationship and allows the film to be more than just another entry in the creature-feature canon.
Killer Whale opens tomorrow both in theaters and VOD tomorrow Friday, January 16.
