47 Meters Down (2017) [REVIEW] | The Real Cage Dive

Once more we are more on the serious side of the shark movie, with the rare UK production, among the overwhelming number of american and australian ones, 47 Meters Down (or 47 Metres Down, as my UK DVD release says, thought it was just a typo on the cover art and the back of the box, but nope, it’s just unsure how exactly “europey” it wants to sound), which would also “inspire” the third Open Water film, released just months after this one.

But we’ll talk about what differentiates the two movies when talking of Open Water 3, for what concerns 47 Meters Down, you just have to know it’s about two sisters that decide – after the more introverted one breaks up with her boyfriend – to spend a vacation together in Messico.

While there, they decide to try something extreme and go on a cage scuba dive, but due to the wire malfunctioning, they end up being trapped in a shark cage underwater (at the depth the title specifically refers to), and they desperate struggle to escape while great white sharks siege them.

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[EXPRESSO] Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (2021) | Monstrum Abruptum

So, this review wasn’t planned at all, not so soon anyway.

I was aware of the Resident Evil CG films going back from the early 2000s, but i never cared to check them out. This one just came out on Netflix as an exclusive, i decided to watch some episodes… and i have the suspicion this first “season” was originally a short movie, as it’s incredibly short and a bit too much “definitive” in its resolution than expected, let’s say that.

I guess Capcom went for the “Castlevania” approach, with a first season only lasting 4 standard lenght episodes to test the waters, and plans to eventually make more and longer seasons, but this doesn’t change that this thing isn’t exactly mindblowing. Again, at the time of writing (and posting) i haven’t seen the previous CG films, so i can’t compare to that.

But i can say that the dialogue isn’t good, often cringey and redundant. While the 3D CG looks honestly quite good, despite still feeling like a big budget long ensemble of cutscenes from a videogame… this first season barely does anything with the set-up, one oddly located in an early 2000s America where Leon has to stop a conspiracy involving a foreign nation and avoid that the US President (father of Ashley from RE 4) sets on the path of war against China.

It’s just so underwhelming AND short, not really an inspired or surprising script, even the action scenes and the monsters leave a bit to be desired. It’s not completely awful, it’s mildly entertaining, but it’s just so generic, uninspired and forgettable, even as a “foundation”. There IS something to work with, sure, but judging by this, i would expect more stories that barely interconnect and are resolved too quickly to create anything.

We’ll see.

Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws (2015) [REVIEW] | The Auckland Haunting

As said as the end of the Ghost Shark review, 2 years after that movie we would get… another movie. Called Ghost Shark 2, for sure, but being unrelated to the 2013 Ghost Shark movie produced by SyFy, because numbers are for idiots with their logic and assumptions of sequels.

We encountered many cases of titles implying the movie are sequels when they’re not, many times, but Ghost Shark 2 is a peculiar case, as it started as a fake trailer (well before the first Ghost Shark was even a thing, odd as it sounds) and eventually became a real movie, like Hobo With A Shotgun, after production of a feature version did start in Auckland back in 2010.

Yeah, this is a New Zealand production, and the movie wants you to know it takes place there, in Auckland, specifically, because why not.

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Sharks In Venice (2008) [REVIEW] | Bambino Sharks In The Canal

I’ve actually already reviewed this one on the old italian blog, but it was years ago, and this is a crapfest worth a complete rewrite: I mean, i kinda have to spotlight a movie called Sharks In Venice during shark month, even though i would have felt the same obligation if i was bulgarian, because of course Sharks In Venice isn’t shot in Venice, but the far cheaper Sofia, Bulgaria.

This one in particular it’s produced by Nu Image, and boy were they pumping out shark movies fromn the late 90s to the 2000s, so it comes at no surprise this is directed and written by Danny Lerner, director of Raging Sharks/Shark Invasion (itself a kind of spin-off of the Shark Attack series), and 2003’s Shark Zone. So we are in… middling hands, at the very best.

I guess he really wanted to make a shark movie with the mafia involved, which brings us back to Jaws once again… the original novel, this time, but still, we are bound to eternally have to notice how all sharks movies in some way spawn from that Spielberg’s 1975 classic. In some way or another.

The plot sees a scuba diver, David Franks go to Venice accompanied by his wife, in order to talk with the local police force and locate the whereabouts of his missing father. While investigating the canal where David’s father may have been seen for the last time, he discovers an underwater cave filled with treasure, and manages to survive the attack of a shark. The mafia gets wind of this and then blackmails David into going to the cave and bring them the rest of the treasure.

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Snow Shark – Ancient Snow Beast (2012) [REVIEW] | Papermaciè Sharks

I wanted to cover this alongside the other 2 ice themed shark movies this last january, but only, after searching high and low (♫ there’s no end to the lenghts ♫ ), i got a hold of the first “snow shark” movie ever, at least as far as i’m aware, one that came out in the early 2010s but precedes the modern strain of sharks mixed with natural phenomena, made robot, giant, ghost, and so on.

Yes, the full title is needed because there’s also Avalanche Sharks, in some territories (like Germany) sold as “Snow Shark/s”, at least on home video.

And for this one, we must once again thread into psychotronic “shot on shitteo”, as in homegrown cinema, shot by a guy that directs, writes and stars into his movies, alongside the cast made of his friends and family (who brought their own costumes and props to the set), clearly shot in his hometown on a very short time-span and on a shoestring budget, like less than 7000 dollars.

And yes, this one is in the same league as Jurassic Shark and Krampus The Christmas Devil, actually this feels like a Polonia Brothers joint… and they’re involved alongside Brett Piper (of Queen Crab “fame”) as editors, but we’re still in that specific strata of “low-to-no budget”.

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Tintorera (1977) [REVIEW] | Sleaze Sharks

When talking about Jaws rip-offs made soon after the success of Spielberg’s movie, one that doesn’t get mentioned that often is Tintorera, also known as Tintorera – Tiger Shark, and i wonder why not, i genuinely do, because while the italian Jaws rip-offs were so brazen to the point of actual lawsuit happening, this is from mexican exploitation shlockmeister Rene Cardona Jr.

You know, the guy better known for incredibly shitty and sleazy exploitation titles like Guyana – Cult Of The Damned, the film about the Jonestown’s Guyana massacre-ritual mass suicide, actually the first film ever to be based on the events, because taste was always out of the question, and he wanted to come first in to profit off a recent tragedy. Personally, i think i will always bring with me Night Of The Thousand Cats as the perfect example of his brand of shlock, non-existent budget and random animal cruelty. And in that one he doesn’t even kill a cat, but he does kill real sharks (yes, plural) in Tintorera, and would later film a dog being killed in Cyclone (1978).

Thankfully in that movie it’s clearly staged… i think, but since it’s Rene Cardona Jr. i just had to triple check, and even if common sense suggests he couldn’t get away with killing a dog, i’m still kinda unsure because they later show something that they clearly skinned and gutted. Just a warning, since i don’t know when or if i’ll ever get around to review that, for various reasons.

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Ghost Shark (2013) [REVIEW] | Seabound Phantasm Of The Deep

When there’s no more room in shark movie hell, we’ll get a shark version of Dante’s Inferno, somehow.

Or something. Because these niche sub-subgenre of horror movies eventually would have tried to generate titles by combining “shark” with all of the Pokemon types, and then stich together a movie from just the title, no matter what the word is or how stupid it sounds. Just mash things together.

Despite it being a “niche”, there’s always space for some weird ass, stupid take on the “shark movie”, even when you think it reached total saturation stuff like “Sharks Of The Corn” will show up online. And even in 2013 we already felt like we saw every type of stupid bullshit involving sharks, so you had to really think about and put some effort in a premise that would catch the attention of a public who already saw sharks defy the rules of nature (cue music) and weather.

So this time we got a frigging ghost shark, it is indeed what it says on the tin.

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Raiders Of The Lost Shark (2015) [REVIEW] | Jurassic Shark: Fallen Kingdom

Read the title. Read it again. And yes, that is the original title.

It pretty strongly implies this is a shark-centric Indiana Jones rip-off, and low budget full movie lenght parodies can be atrocious and ungodly, so this already should put you in the defensive. It really should.

But experience did “tell me” that wasn’t the case either, it would have been weirder if i didn’t heard more people talk about the oddity of a shark movie parodying Indiana Jones, and yes, it’s just another fuckin shark flick about a prehistoric giant shark released by the usual oil drilling accident, with the beast rampaging in the waters of a small lake community.

It’s only 70 minutes long (actually, just 60, jesus christ), it’s not directed dy Donald Farmer, how bad can it be?

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Aquarium Of The Dead (2021) [REVIEW] | Aqua Zoombies

Today i’m gonna ask you a question, answer sincerely.

Who exactly asked for a Zoombies 3?

I’m not even being sarcastic, i’m genuinely curious because i’m pretty sure most people that at least saw the first Zoombies didn’t knew it had a “sequel” to begin with. This is not a series that has anything as a following, as far as i understand.

But yes, this is actually the third movie in the Zoombies trilogy, despite the title.

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Land Shark (2020) [REVIEW] | China Deep Blue Sealab

Not be confused with the Polonia Brothers movie of the same released in 2017.

Or the SNL sketch.

Nope, this time we’re branching out a bit and taking one of the many (more than i expected, anyway) creature features from mainland China that manage to be known westward thanks to dedicated users reviewing them, and the various chinese companies realizing it’s easier to market these outside of China if they just put the movies on their Youtube channel with english subs.

Like this one, originally titled Luxingsha (which translates to “Land Shark”, as you could guess by now) and directed by Cheng Siyu, and at the time of reading available for free on Youtube with optional english, indonesian and vietnamese subs.

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