We do gotta pick every stitch, it is always season of scripts running down the ditch,
sharks are out to make it rich, must be the season of sons of a bitch
I’m sorry Donovan, but these fuckin movies often leave me little choice but just invent shit like this, especially when scriptwriters don’t even bother to make the premise stand out for movies like these, so at a glance they mesh all together and often can be really sketchly summed, as they barely have anything to say or show. Especially when they keep getting released under alternate titles that are either mystifing, deceptive, or already used by older, better known shark movies. Because fuck you.
There’s no other explanation than “fuck you” when you release this recent shark movie as “Shark Attack” for its UK DVD release. And as “Deep Blue Nightmare” for US TV broadcasts. (sighs)
Oh sorry, this one has Michael Madsen in it… which doesn’t even count as a distinguishing feature, as he already had a brief cameo in 2018’s Megalodon, which was made quickly to capitalize on the release of The Meg. Saying it now because i didn’t realized that when writing the review of that one. Should’ve have guessed it, because both Megalodon from 2018 and this one are from The Asylum.
A fact i didn’t realized until i sat down to watch the movie, again, could have blindly guessed it was an Asylum joint as it plays “Based on real events” card because Open Water did it, and proved it’s a decent marketing tactic to plaster that phrase on posters, regardless if there’s any truth to the claim.
This one doesn’t seem to be a mockbuster of anything in particular, it’s just a generic shark movie, odd but it’s not like The Asylum ONLY makes mockbusters.
OK, let’s talk about the plot.
Three kayakers that went to sea in order to do a photoshoot (for something not very well explained) get stalked by a great white shark, and are forced to take refuge from the beast on a small island, but as the tide rises, they have to escape and try to survive.
I will commend them for trying to do a more serious horror-thriller instead of a tongue-in-cheek b-movie, but it just doesn’t work, there’s no tension, no atmosphere of dread, and you still end up siding with the shark. Not because the movie wants you to, but because the characters are so boring, don’t react like humans unless when the script remembers they should, the acting is so flat you just don’t a damn , and the dialogues often quite awful… you end up inclined to see the shark eat them.
The sharks are shown in a combination of obviously repurposed documentary footage of real sharks (even more obvious to tell due to the differention color saturation) and the usual Asylum “quality” of CG sharks. It’s a touch better than usual, and they made some physical props for some close-up shots, but they are still fake looking and they stick out even more with the footage of real sharks.
“But Michael Madsen?!” He being here helps, as his performance is still the better one in the movie, even if he’s obviously half-assing it big time (like Eric Roberts in many Asylum flicks), and he’s more in the movie than expected, more than he was in the aforementioned Megalodon from 2018, but he’s given even less interesting stuff to work with. At least in that one he put a cigar in the eye of a megalodon, here he just talks on the phone and doesn’t directly interact with anyone else.
Overall, the movie isn’t even mediocre, it’s that kind of bad that’s watchable but totally uninteresting, that feels longer than it is even clocking under 90 minutes, since there’s a lot of padding scenes with obviously crowbarred exposition that benefits only the audience (and doesn’t actually explain much at all), boring romance subplots and other filler, like an explanation of why a shark is there to begin with, not needed and deliberately made overly long.
This is one of those movies that has more than one potential climax, but it goes on ahead, with characters that say there are not gonna do that… and seconds later do that regardless, even if they established they couldn’t. Even when some event it’s not totally senseless, it’s not that well explained and as a result most of the movie just comes off as frustratingly dumb and contradictory.
On top of that, the final confrontation with the shark is lame AND anticlimactic to boot.
This is bad, but it’s boring, forgettable bad. You won’t even remember watching this in a week time, and since it’s neither good or that memorably bad to be worth committing to memory.. it’s for the best. Poor, not quite entertaining, and bloated, even with a dash of an uncaring Michael Madsen and some ok cinematography, this is a just a waste of time, even if you want some shark trash.
Wise Cafe (International) 