Saban Films’ shark thriller The Requin is out in theaters, on demand, and digital today. Directed by Le-Van Kiet, the film stars Alicia Silverstone and James Tupper in the main roles as a couple whose romantic retreat goes horribly wrong.
“There’s terror in paradise when Jaelyn (Alicia Silverstone) and Kyle (James Tupper) arrive at a remote seaside villa in Vietnam for a romantic getaway,” says the official synopsis. “A torrential storm descends, reducing the villa to little more than a raft and sweeping the young couple out to sea. Suddenly, another danger appears: a school of great white sharks. With her injured husband watching helplessly, Jaelyn must battle the deadly predators alone in this tense thriller that rides an unrelenting wave of fear.”
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with The Requin star Alicia Silverstone about the challenges of filming in water, the film’s emotional themes, and more.
Tyler Treese: Your character in the film, Jaelyn, is dealing with a lot of trauma after losing a child. That’s something that, unfortunately, a lot of people can relate to and she sort of blames herself. What went into that portrayal?
Alicia Silverstone: Well, I mean, that’s such a deep, sad thing, right? And yeah, losing a baby is, you know, it’s the worst. What a terrible thing. And to have the baby make it all the way to birth and then to go. So she’s struggling with so much post-traumatic stress and trauma, and she has these episodes and it’s really her husband and her are barely making it. It’s destroying them.
Speaking of your husband in the film, James Tupper does a really great job. What went into building that rapport with him, and how was it filming with him?
Well, James and I worked together before on American Woman, a show I did a few years back, maybe three or four years ago. He had been recommended to me by a friend at the time and I brought him in and he just killed it, he was so great, and so we loved working together. I had an incredible time with him. So I recommended him for this too, and Le-Van Kiet, the director, fell in love with him as I knew he would, and we had such a good time together. He’s just a really fun person. I’m so happy I get to work with him, and I really love the experience.
There are some extremely tense water scenes in the film. What were the biggest challenges in filming so much in water and doing these shark scenes?
Well, it was freezing, so there’s that. I mean, truly freezing. At one point, the, set medic checked my temperature and he was like, ‘No, you have to stay, we have to get you warm. Your temperatures dropping too low.,’ because they were throwing water. I was laying in the sand with my face planted in the sand, and they were throwing buckets of water on me to try and have it look like the ocean is, you know, getting in my mouth and waking me up, and it was freezing, just absolutely freezing, so that was challenging. It’s also challenging because we’re in a pool the whole time. There’s no ocean, there are no sharks, there are people everywhere, right? So it’s just, your imagination has to really kick in, and your commitment to what you know the circumstances are because it’s so reliant on the visual effects. The whole film rides on the visual effects.
The film revolves around this universal terror that is these great sharks and being trapped at sea. Shark films have been able to stay relevant for so many decades at this point. What did you enjoy most about this sub-genre?
Well, I wanna say that I love sharks and I respect them. I don’t think that they’re scary creatures that we should be so freaked out by. That said, I don’t wanna run into one in the ocean, that’s for darn sure. I want them to be left to do their business. So this is a story about… we are taking that to an extreme that these sharks, because they smell the blood, because they’re hungry. You could even argue because we’re destroying the planet, the environment, that they are hunting us down.
But I don’t know why people like shark movies so much. I think It’s survival. It’s this idea that these two people in this movie are fighting for their marriage because of all that they’ve been through, and they come on this trip with a last-ditch effort to reclaim their love and make it work right? You see glimmers of that, the hope and the possibility, but then, unfortunately, this life-altering thing happens and they now are fighting for their actual lives. And when fighting for their actual lives, it sort of helps them fall back in love again, in a way, or at least really, truly appreciate what they loved about each other to begin with. I think it’s really beautiful, and compelling, and loving and emotional.
Speaking of horror, I’m not sure if you’ve seen it yet, but you were mentioned in the new Scream movie as playing a role in their film within a film, Stab. Were you given any heads up on that little easter egg? And what are your thoughts on that?
I actually don’t know anything about that. So let me ask, I’m gonna write that down and ask someone about it, cause I don’t know anything about that.
You famously played Batgirl and Leslie Grace is gonna play a different version of that character in a film coming up. Do you have any advice for her, just dealing with that scrutiny that actresses face when dealing with these high-profile superhero roles?
I think the times are so different now. I really do. I think she’s gonna do wonderful and be fine. I don’t think that people criticize us the way that they did 20 years ago at all. I think that the internet would come and attack whoever was doing that, right? [laughs] It’s like there’s like a support team out there that says that’s not allowed. And so yeah, I think she’s gonna be fine. I think! Don’t you?
Yeah. Some of the set photos look great. You had a really fun cameo appearance in the Beastie Boys short film Fight For Your Right Revisited. How did that come about?
How did you know about that? You’re the first person who’s ever mentioned that to me.
I’ve been on a real big Beastie Boys kick. I just watched it the other day and then I realized you were in it, but how did that come along, and what did it mean for you to do that before MCA unfortunately passed?
Well, he asked me to do it and, I can’t remember why or how, unfortunately, cause that was a while ago, but…how did that come about? He just asked me and I said, “Absolutely.? I knew that fun friends were gonna be there like Laura Dern and you know, it was just gonna be a fun group of people. So it was a joy to do, and easy to do. I have no idea why I was there, how that all happened. Yeah. It was fun.
Clueless is still being quoted 25 plus years later. How crazy is it that you kind of had an impact on the vernacular for an entire generation and that the film is still so beloved?
It’s really wonderful, honestly. I was just in Round Top, Texas, and I was meeting lots of fun people and they would put me on the phone with their kids [laughs], like FaceTiming them and their kids would have a heart attack. Like, the 18-year-old’s reactions to seeing me was really sweet. And I think what’s really neat is just that you kind of expect that the people who are your age are the ones who are gonna like it because they were there at that time.
But this is a film that’s been passed on and passed on and it’s really lovely that people really connect with it, and in terms of the vernacular, I think it’s really funny that sometimes you just hear people say things from Clueless and…they say the word clueless a lot, and they say “as if,” there’s just a lot of references, and it even comes up in my own life sometimes, and that makes me laugh. Where I’ll just think, “Oops, my bad,” or I’ll say something like, “You know how picky I am,” and I’ll think about, “You see how picky I am about my shoes and they only go on my feet.” I think that’s such a funny line. Amy Heckerling’s a brilliant genius, basically. [The novel] Emma written by Jane Austin is also a genius. So the combination is pretty great.
