“Don’t Go in the Water”: Jennifer Van Gessel’s ‘Water Horse’ [Movie Review]

If you want to sell me on a movie, you’ve got plenty of options. Folk horror, for sure, will get my attention, but mentioning a mythological creature or two will have me listening closely. Make that movie found footage, and suddenly, I’m leaning forward in my seat. With such a low barrier to entry, the genre offers too many creative ways to break the rules to be easily ignored. If all these boxes are checked and I found out that the film comes from Australia—the country that has some of the bleakest, most unique, and culturally rich horror stories we’ve seen in decades—well, then there’s no question: It’s a must-see for me. I was introduced to Jennifer Van Gessel’s Water Horse by way of a Bloody Disgusting article and knew instantly I had to reach out to the director.

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Starring Lauren Grimson and Dean Kyrwood (both of whom previously worked together on another Aussie production, Wyrmwood: Apocalypse) as Dianne Wilson and Osmond Shaw, Water Horse tracks their investigation of a string of disappearances and apparent drownings in local waters. Dianne is a popular paranormal investigator, while Osmond is an actor who is sent an anonymous, premonitory photograph of Dianne and himself floating in a lake, despite their never having met. What follows is a bizarre series of interconnected incidents, supernatural occurrences, and—possibly—interdimensional creatures spiriting away citizens of New South Wales. 

Dianne and Osmond in Water Horse.

It’s a bit difficult to pinpoint exactly what mythological provenance inspired the “water horse” of the film’s title. Water horses have appeared in countless cultures over the centuries, almost always as cautionary tales against going near dangerous waters. Most prominently, though, Water Horse features creatures or spirits that seem (at least related to) the Scottish kelpie and the Manx glashtyn; both dangerous water-spirits in their respective pantheons. Before I go any deeper, however, I do want to point out that the film’s assumed ambiguity on this point, and its unwillingness to spell out the origins of its creatures is a huge positive for me. Few things are more exciting to me than a film that inspires its viewers to seek out their own answers, particularly when those answers require a merging or transplantation of folklore; especially given the fact that that’s precisely how stories evolve in the first place.

While dozens of found footage films have taken the “paranormal investigator” approach, Water Horse leans more heavily into the true-crime docu-style of delivery. Rather than relying on a high-energy, bombastic personality to sell its scares, both Dianne and Shaw maintain a more muted, somber demeanor, keeping the production grounded in a way that might do the film more harm than good. Without any emotional uplifts, the characters keep the tone too steady, with no peaks or valleys to moderate the waning attention spans of modern audiences. That’s not to say that the story itself lacks those modulations in tempo. Van Gessel does a great job at distributing the film’s various revelations for maximum impact. From the discovery of a seemingly autonomous kelpie statuette to the drowned body of a girl being recovered more than 20 hours south of the site of her disappearance, there are plenty of points in which the film makes up for the monotonous moods of its characters.

Of course, a found footage film is only as good as its reveals, and Water Horse’s effectiveness will rely on how easily you accept its premise. As mentioned previously, this isn’t a film that will offer its viewers easy, self-contained answers. Water Horse is the kind of film that invites as much “head canon” as it does exposition, and fans of one may not necessarily be a fan of the other. Personally, I find the approach to be increasingly refreshing in a climate in which executives are allegedly telling creatives to over-exposit for distracted viewers. While that claim is disputed, there does seem to be an increasing number of films that go out of their way to hold the hands of viewers, and Water Horse is certainly not one. With such an overabundance of content jostling for our attention, it’s easier than ever to move on from one film to the next without giving yourself the time to sit with your thoughts. 

Some of the most enduring found footage films are those that have an image that sticks with you. The Blair Witch Project certainly set the tone there, but whether it’s Raatma, Deborah Logan, or Frogman, countless others have that one image that cements itself in viewers’ brains and I’m happy to say that Water Horse joins that legacy. The only thing that it asks is that you do a little work on your part to make that image real, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask. If anything, it makes thinking about the film almost as much fun as watching it in the first place, which I think can only help the film stick around in crowded found footage circles.

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Article by Ande Thomas

Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He is an independent member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.

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