2020 was one hell of a year, and homegrown filmakers pumping out shark movies like these didn’t help the situation. Especially if this one was actually finished in 2017 (to ride on the gravy train of Oujia: Origin Of Evil, released in 2016 as the prequel to the 2014’s film Oujia), but wasn’t released for 2/3 years, that’s the mark of quality if i’ve ever saw one. I mean, this isn’t an exception to the rule like Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, which undeservedly sat unreleased for 3 decades.
Yeah, let’s end the month on something extra tacky and cheap, but let’s give Mark Polonia a deserved rest, since we have Brett Kelly directing this one, using the age old trick of using a pseudonym, “Scott Patrick”, and it’s not the only time he used this specific one.
Why bother in the internet age i don’t know, but i guess it’s tradition, after all.
Yep, the director of fan-unfavourites like Jurassic Shark and its quasi-sequel Raiders Of The Lost Shark, which we previously covered before. And a bunch of mockbusters of the 1st MCU cycle, alongside something called She-Rex. Hmmm! takes note
The best part is the 3 minutes intro that used Old Testament inspired drawings of devils, sea monsters, witches sabbath and so on because they’re public domain pictures.
The rest feels as you think it does, like a home movie where the budget technically allowed a pool because someone close to the director (or he himself) had a pool already, so we can film four… not quite tweens splashing about in da frigging pool and sunbathing.
And it’s exactly as exciting, so none, unless you’re Carl Brutananadilewski, or its canadian cousin.
It’s arguably more enthralling see a random guy wash his car with “mild hard rock music, the music” and then getting help in such a tribulation by one of the tweens, whom at some point just….is in her bra and pants, and start doing a bikini car wash type thing. Without bikinis, or nudity, or Rolls Royceses/i, or actual sexual tension, confusingly enough.
Remember the car wash scene from Futurama? I did, because my mind drifted there due to the overdose of boredom provided by the film, which also reminds you multiple times of the movie its ripping off, like, at least thrice. When it can be bothered to NOT show people eating on screen.
Oh yeah, the plot. Forgot there was such a thing here. I guess.
A group of girls decide to play with an Oujia board one of them found ashore after she went for a quick swim, but they accidentally summon the spirit of a shark… one that somehow understands human language, but whatever, the ghost sharks goes on a feeding frenzy.
thankfully the father of “GOAT girl” (as i’m gonna refer to, due to her t-shirt) is a priest or something (as in a Xavier Renegade Angel-style mix of occultist, native american shaman, and tarot card reader), and it’s up to him to enter the “ghost shark realm” (good lord) and face the daemon.
So it’s basically a soggy biscuit game between Oujia, Ghost Shark 2 (the first one was kinda of enjoyable) and Shark Exorcist, one hell of a revolting blend of things that should not be.
Problem is, the direction given it’s way too serious and flat, acting is wooden amateur hour, and it’s no fuckin wonder even the director decided to not put this one out when it was made, he or Wild Eye Releasing knew they had an impressive stinker, an excellent specimen of the “so bad it’s excruciatingly awful AND boring” that would win an hypothetical “bad movie bingo”: random people that aren’t introduced but all of the sudden are in the movie to fuck or whatever in order to provide awkward filler before they’re eaten, an – almost- absolute lack of special effects or blood, actors look in one specific direction for pretty much all the film forcing one to assume they’re reading cues, it’s only 71 minutes but feels like it’s a Zack Snyder’s Director Cut, the reality of the actual movie being barely over 1 hour long with 11 minutes taken up by credit rolls…
The only things missing are an accidental reflection of the crew in some shiny surfaces or an unaudible audio mix, sadly you’ll hear clearly all the awful dialogues, and that alone (alongside having special effects, crap as they are they’re there) already puts it above Jurassic Shark.
Or my new shark based champion of the abyss alongside the usual suspect, the recently Apex Predator/Jaws Of New York. It’s better than that, at least, which is a bucket of something.
I would had to consider the shark being a cheapass rubber puppet as an upgrade from the papermaciè one of Snow Shark or older Polonia Bros movies, but all the brownie points it could have mustered from that alone are lost since they overuse it. Nill points for no nudity, because all the asses and tits in the world wouldn’t have fixed how abysmally boring it is.
…..Aside from the confrontation between the occultist and the shark in the “transparency effect afterlife”, which has the shark shoot out mystical fireballs and the guy using bootleg Doctor Strange magic to reflect them back, ending with a “spiritual suicide-splosion”.
THAT it’s so fuckin bad and insane it’s actually hard to look away from, it’s funny and it’s honestly memorable, but if you look that scene up on Youtube you might want to see the full thing, which isn’t worth it at all, and sadly that isn’t even the ending, there still 10 minutes left that only disappoint and feature somehow even more stupid but unfunny shit, with a twist involving fuckin Trump and a plan to spread the Oujia shark boards?
I’m spoiling away because i don’t expect anyone to watch this movie, i don’t really recommend doing so even to the more masochistic viewers, but just in case, yes, it’s mostly a boring ass unredeemable slog where (as its often the case) they just should have made the poster but not bothered with an actual movie. It was bound to just be downhill from there.
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