Younger readers might think they saw everything, heard about everything, but don’t underestimate how deep the abyss is, since i can still search for and find more shark movies i’ve never even heard the title before, doesn’t matter if its decades or days old, the black depths keep spewing them out.
Cards on the table, what did i expect from the director of Ebola Rex, RoboWoman, Axegrinder 2, 5G Zombies, Angry Asian Murder Hornets (just to name a few)?
I’d say nothing, but that is not true, because a mental void would be quite calming, this isn’t the case here.
Plot? Sharks attack the beaches of Los Angeles, leaving corpses around just in time to ruin the opening of a new resort. Done.
The rest – as in 90% of the movie – is boring ass random padding or clumsy exposition dialogue that often has nothing to do with anything else, and even when an actual plot or narrative start manifesting, it just isn’t worth caring or describing in any detail aside from the shark being a spontaneous mutant, or at least we’re told so, and that’ll have to do since we never see any of this.
At least i think they’re supposed to be the beaches of LA, you’ll notice some obvious british accented actor from the cast, bringing out ….. performances, we can call them that. Sometimes it’s hard to even hear the dialogues, it’s that fucking inaudible bullshit all over again. GOTTA have that.
Since this was released in 2021 and coming from this director, one would expect at the very least NOT to suffer a garbage montage of people filming themselves alone due to COVID quarantine, like 5G Zombies was… and thankfully it’s the case, we have more than one person in the scenes.
Yes, the bar is indeed so low not even Hermes Conrad could limbo it.
I would have proclaimed the scuba diving footage of marine life (which include sharks) used in the intro as the best part of the movie, since it’s relaxing, but even the stock footage itself looks like bottled ass coming from a camera your dad used during a summer vacation in the 90s.
And of course they didn’t even bother to make props for close ups of the sharks in the stock footage attacking the camera, or edit the shots to simulate a shark attack, like the old Nu Image shark flicks.
This is obviously a “no budget” kinda of shark movie, but jesus christ, i miss the papermaciè sharks and that damn house on the lake of the Polonia Bros films. I do. At least he tries (i think) more than this, where it all screams of the director wanting to turn a weekend on the beach into a shark movie, minus the shark attacks but with plenty of footage of people that most likely were NOT aware of being filmed, assuming they had permits to film in the first place.
I’m sure they did, joking aside, but that’s the “energy” that this movie emanates.
This is more than “so bad its bad”, it’s 1/10 material alright, but the kind that doesn’t even make me angry, this is so horrendous you experience sensory deprivation, so much nothing is paradoxically in this movie. A shark attack movie without shark attacks (there’s people running from the sharks, but no depiction of any actual shark attack, it doesn’t count), and that’s not the even the worst part.
It’s that kind of glacially unwatchable film that manages to look like absolute shit even in screenshots, thanks to the abysmal camera work that makes it all look shaky, grainy, and overexposed too, making one want to go ahead and fix the color contrast yourself.
But somehow Apex Predators disarms your anger with its absolute miserable self, so depression kicks in and you don’t care to even insult the director anymore.
I’d call the acting wooden and lifeless (despite the actors trying their darnest) but you know, trees ARE living organisms.
The only nice thing i can say without being a sarcastic condescending ass is that the music is nice, that rap song and the metal opening theme song “Blood God” by Overt Enemy, especially the latter i can dig, even though it’s strategically used over the overly long (especially for crap like this) opening credits scene, all to make the film reach its 70 minutes runtime.
Ok, let’s be honest, the movie it’s even less than 1 hour long, as almost 20 minutes are taken up by credit rolls over black background, and of course it ends/stops with a double whammy of fake “it was all a dream” twist and a nonsensical display that doesn’t mean shit but it’s “weird” on purpose, in the hope people will remember and/or bitch about that if nothing else from the movie. Whatever.
Watching this movie to me felt like an aseptic experience, so much i will say there’s a sequel in pre-production, so i feel it’s fair to note that it’s as inevitable as me eventually seeing and reviewing it, as another deliberate exercise in pointless endeavours and wasted time i most likely won’t enjoy.
Wise Cafe (International) 