It’s nobody’s fault but mine that every time I get to watch a shark attack movie, I instantly pit it against Jaws. Hayley Easton’s Something in the Water is not a completely wasted film, but it just lacks so many aspects that make these movies click. The reasonable runtime might be the only factor that prevents this film from being a complete snoozefest, but I’d be lying if I don’t accept that I did manage to get a good nap while watching it.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
Meg and Kayla are a couple who get in trouble with a bunch of homophobic women in the subway. Kayla loses her patience and flips them off, but Meg gets the beating instead of her. The women throw Meg down the stairs and kick her ceaselessly. Meg breaks up with Kayla, and a year later, fate brings them together once again. Meg gets invited to her friend Lizzie’s wedding on a dreamy island, and she sees Kayla is at the airport to receive her. Along with their two other friends, Cam and Ruth, the girls just want to have a good time at Lizzie’s wedding and on vacation. Cam plans a whole day for the group before Lizzie gets married, and the women sail into the sea, unaware of what’s waiting for them.
Why are Kayla and Meg left alone?
Cam takes the girls out to the dock for a day of adventure. Leaving all the fancy and comfortable yachts, she’s booked a worn-out boat that can barely accommodate five people. To add to Lizzie’s misery, Cam takes all their phones to have no interruptions during their rendezvous. After sailing for some time, Cam drops Kayla and Meg on a deserted island, and they go to the other side. Lizzie and Ruth too want them to bury the bad blood, and Kayla seems visibly uncomfortable by this. The two find each other after a long time, and Kayla apologizes to her. They start to swim back to the other side of the island, and they reach where the rest of the gang stopped. Kayla and Meg fake that they’re back together to pull their leg (this is going to end up horribly), and they also propose that they could marry the same day Lizzie is getting married. In the middle of the laughs and giggles, Ruth feels something touching her from under the seawater. A piece of her leg has been bitten off, and Lizzie figures that Cam has brought them to shark-infested waters.
Did the girls save Ruth?
The group rushes to the boat and tries to contact someone, but they find no signal on their phones. Lizzie takes the wheel, and she somehow drives the boat, hoping to reach shore as soon as possible. When Lizzie sees that Ruth’s continuously bleeding and they can’t staunch it, she speeds up. Lizzie inadvertently crashes the boat into a coral reef, and soon the chaos and panic take over. The boat gets flooded, and Lizzie reveals that she can’t swim. With only two life jackets available and the sharks hovering around for fresh meat, the girls must survive in the water. Lizzie holds on, and everyone tries to teach her to stay afloat using the life jacket. In the middle of the sea, with no help and an injured Ruth, the only solution they come up with is to stab the shark in the nose or gills with a knife. After a short interval of the girls impersonating Ruth and having a laugh, they see Ruth has passed. Lizzie’s bridesmaid dies a day before her wedding, and her bleeding leg makes the rest of them a target for the sharks. Cam convinces the group to let Ruth’s body go, and her corpse starts to sink under the sea.
How does Cam die?
The group bickers amongst themselves after Ruth’s death, and it’s decided that someone needs to swim to land to get help. Kayla agrees to go, as she’s the strongest swimmer out of them. Cam and Lizzie get into a fight, and that eventually reveals that Kayla was going to propose to Meg on the night they were attacked. The group only wanted to help them get back together, and that’s why they planned this trip to the island. Meg gets desperate to talk to Kayla after this, and she starts to swim to land. Meanwhile, Lizzie notices a shark approaching Meg, and Cam gets bitten on the arm trying to save her. Cam sacrifices herself to save Meg and Lizzie, and she swims away with her bleeding arm to draw the shark to her. The shark gets to her, and she becomes lunch.
Did Lizzie and Meg survive in the sea?
The girls see a yacht approaching them, and the hope inside them empowers their lungs to shout for help at its loudest. But the people inside the yacht are busy partying and never even see the girls fighting for their lives. Meg dreams of Kayla and almost passes out, and a storm leads to heavy rainfall. Even in this situation, these two laugh their hearts out, thinking they’re still alive. Hanging in the middle of the ocean with their arms holding each other, they withstand the dodgy waters. After treading water for so long, Lizzie finally feels her time has come. She puts the friendship bracelets she made for them in Meg’s pocket, and she’s gone too. Meg opens her eyes hours later, and she’s devastated to see Lizzie is nowhere to be found. She desperately dives under water to search for Lizzie, but the ocean isn’t very empathetic to Meg either.
Does Kayla save Meg from the sharks?
In Something in the Water‘s ending, Meg starts to swim towards the land after losing everyone, but she sees a shark coming for her. She somehow kicks her way out of harm, but her hands are bleeding, and blood is like coke for sharks. Meg rubs her blood on the lifejacket and throws it in a different direction to distract the shark, and she makes it to a coral reef, which is sitting just right on top of the water. Bruised and bleeding, she bandages her wound with the clothes she was wearing and passes out on the rocks soon. Her eyes open once again when she notices the tide rising, and it won’t be long before the reef she’s sitting on goes under the water. Scared for her life, she stands up on the reef while her bleeding knee lets the shark know where its hunt is. Kayla returns with a boat, and Meg makes it to the boat just by a tiny margin, saving herself from the knife-sharp teeth of the creature. On the way back, Meg finds the friendship bracelets Lizzie left for her, and both Meg and Kayla break down in tears. It’s understandable how hard it is for them to process the death of a friend who truly loved them, and they came to celebrate the beginning of her new life. It seems Kayla and Meg, the two survivors from the deadly trip, decide to get back together, as they should. When the sharks couldn’t tear them apart, misunderstandings and fights certainly couldn’t either.
