Not long after it starts, as the new Australian film Beast of War starts wrapping you uncomfortably in the quiet, terrifying still of the ocean, trapped in an inescapable fog and stalked by a man-eating shark, you would not be alone if you were wondering why horror films remain so appealing.

The brilliance of this one, written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, perhaps owes a small debt to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote: “Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion; as idle as a painted ship, upon a painted ocean.”

It might owe another small debt to history, as it is set in 1942, and based – very loosely – on the story of a group of young soldiers, led by Leo (Mark Coles Smith), left adrift in the ocean after a

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