SHARK SUMMER

The arrival of a big-budget film crew on Martha’s Vineyard prompts a group of young residents and visitors to make a movie of their own about a gruesome local legend.

A vivid sense of place and nuanced backstories enrich a summertime adventure that begins as a lark but takes on discomfiting twists on the way to a melodramatic climax. Dragged into the project by Elijah, cineaste son of a visiting journalist, 13-year-old Gayle and reclusive, bullied Madison settle on an old tale known as the Atwood Terror, about a wealthy fishing-club owner who supposedly fed victims to sharks for the amusement of his shady associates. To their surprise they discover not only that there might be something to the legend, but that locals seem oddly unwilling to share what they know. Persistence pays off, and Elijah’s fancy camera records clues from old maps and elsewhere that lead at last to startling revelations and narrow squeaks made all the more thrilling for being set amid isolated ruins during a wild storm—although the finished movie turns out to be very different from the one the three thought they were making. Meanwhile, eloquently chronicled in Marcks’ cinematic panels through silent gestures and expressions as much as speech, friendships are formed and repaired, parental relationships articulated, and inner conflicts expressed and resolved. Major characters present White; Elijah and his dad are brown-skinned.

A winning production.