After world-premiering its World War II film-meets-shark creature feature mix at the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival, “Beast of War” has released its trailer. The feature will play Australian cinemas from Thursday, October 9.
Mark Coles Smith leads the thriller, which also stars Joel Nankervis (“Single, Out”), Sam Delich (“Territory”), Aswan Reid (“The New Boy”) and Lee Tiger Halley (2025’s Best Supporting Actor in a Drama AACTA winner for “Boy Swallows Universe”). The latest film from “Wyrmwood” writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner, “Beast of War” takes inspiration from the real-life 1942 sinking of the HMAS Armidale troop carrier off Western Australia’s coast.
2025 is a busy year for Coles Smith, with the second season of TV’s “Mystery Road: Origin” arriving in September and film “We Bury the Dead” also screening at MIFF. Only “Wyrmwood” writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner has cast the actor as an Indigenous soldier trying not only to survive combat, but also a threat from the ocean, however.
“I’ve never seen a shark like that before,” Coles Smith’s Leo utters in the atmospheric trailer.
Continuing Roache-Turner’s commitment to practical effects, “Beast of War” deploys a full-scale animatronic great white to menace its soldiers.
Thanks to the two “Wyrmwood” films, as well as 2018’s “Nekrotronic,” 2024’s “Sting” and now “Beast of War,” the director’s resume spans features about taking on zombies, demons, spiders and sharks. “I’m just making my way through the monsters,” the filmmaker told “Concrete Playground” in an interview in 2024.
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His description of the plot of “Beast of War” at the time: “a ship gets shot down by Japanese torpedoes halfway between Darwin and East Timor, and these guys are trapped on a raft and they’re bedevilled by this giant killer shark that’s eating them one by one”.
Before its general release, “Beast of War” is also screening at CinefestOZ.
Watch Beast of War‘s trailer below: