Tis the season.
If you are an avid shark moviegoer, it’s quite likely you heard of it, but then again, there are so many of these crappy B-movies around, it might have been lost between the Sharkenados, the Sharktopuses (a trilogy, so far) and the sharks that stack corpses to create dams like frigging beavers.
And because you didn’t ask, Zombeavers is also a thing.
Sand Sharks it another sterling exemplary of titulation, because it’s true, this time the sharks swim in the sand. How? In the paraphraresd words of the resident marine biologist “because they basically suck water out of the sand to survive”. ‘K.
And yes, it’s basically Tremors but with sharks instead, the sand sharks are attracted by sound and vibration as well, all done much poorer, but again, this is par for the course in the “shark” subgenre. It just is.
The plot has a promoter trying to set up a festival on an island in time for Spring Break, in order to give some life to the island’ businnesses. The local sheriff is against the festival because he remembers how 15 people died of shark attacks on the last island festival, but the major decides to go on with it, until they actually find the culprits behind the recent deaths near the beach: sand sharks.
But of course the festival still goes on, because if you didn’t get to see douchebags being eaten by shark… you’ll probably disappointed, and rightly so.
You know what, it’s surprisingly entertaining. It’s crap, the acting is birch flavored and hammy at the very best (but i’ve seen far worse, for what it’s worth), the plot is recycled and so are the characters, doesn’t matter if the major here wants to actually close the beach to avoid serving the partygoers to the sand sharks, the movie does the trope anyway, and has a Quint stand-in anyway, along with a character even more blood hungry than the sharks themselves. She gets eaten, obviously.
And apparentely the screenwriter also can’t stop making really bad puns, regurgitating that quote from Platoon, the usuals from Jaws, and namedrops Roger Corman, which is cheeky and kinda embarassing since Corman is still around producing stuff like the aforementioned Sharktopus movies (and similar trash like Dinocroc, Dinoshark, etc.), which are frankly a bit better put together and directed than this one.
On this, production values are low, lower than a “top tier” Asylum production but higher to stuff like Jurassic Shark, cinematography is amateurish, the effects are awful, pratical ones a bit better, but the digital shark and a very thin slice of digital gore are crap, but then again, nothing THAT much worse than most of the competition. You know to not expect much here, and you will be surprised on this regard. I do wish these productions spent a tiny bit more cash on audio mixing, this time i can hear the character clearly, but i had to crank the tv volume to the max to hear them.
At least the script isn’t laden with filler, so the standard 90 minutes runtime isn’t exhausting to sit through, things happen, you’re not wishing for it be shorter so it can get on with the scenes of people getting eaten by the damn sharks, and the acting is mostly tolerable, most of the cast did some acting before, let’s put it like this. Finale is kinda weak, but it’s a lot more watchable than you’d think, and i’m frankly surprised that Mark Atkins never made Land Sharks or any “follow up” to this.
He has more credits as a cinematographer, but also directed many other b-movies, like this year’s Monster Island. And 6-Headed Shark Attack, because why not?
Wise Cafe (International) 