Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
A shark movie featuring the worst shark effects you will ever see in your life, even the clearly fake looking shark in Jaws from the 70s is better than this.
I will open this review by saying that I am a big Shane West fan, I grew up watching Nikita and later Salem and as such I will always turn up for something starring, or in this case co-starring West. However, though he may be the reason this film gets a 1 and not less, he certainly isn’t enough to make this film even barely watchable.
The shark attack/survival subgenre of horror is already incredibly overpopulated as such it is very hard for a shark film to be good or to standout, for positive reasons, from the rest. This film did stand out but for all the wrong reasons. Obviously as I have previously mentioned the incredibly poor effects on the shark that are almost laughably bad is the main reason, however also bad is the fact that this film looks like a made for TV Sharknado esque affair, but it doesn’t bring the tongue in cheek tone or charm of that film and instead decides to play it straight for the most part- to no one’s benefit.
I also really don’t care for the narrative structure of this film and how it decides to split focus between the main group of partiers under attack by the shark and then a grieving father, played by Trace Adkins, as he decides to hunt down the shark. I suppose the two threads to coreless in the end, but until this point it is a jarring back and forth between them.
Our lead of Jessie, played by Nicky Whelan, is aggressively average. She brings very little to the table beyond being a damsel in distress that doesn’t even really get any good licks in on the shark, instead needing to wait for the uber macho Harlan, Adkins, to come and save her. Something I will give this film credit for is the fact that it uses a cast of older actors rather than have it just be the genre’s standard collection of teens.
Overall, how not to do a Shark movie.
Pros.
Casting older actors
Shane West is trying his best
Cons.
The shark frequently looks terrible
It is boring and cliched
It is on for far too long
The lead performance is fairly reductive
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