I make no secret that i veheemently hate Shark Exorcist, i’ve always hated it well before i re-reviewed it for the blog “shark month”, and while i’m not making a “Worst 10 Shark Films” listicle because there’s always something worse i haven’t seen or that just released that would make that obsolete very fast, if i did, i would put Shark Exorcist as the reigning champion of shit.
Not that Donald Farmer was ever a good director, he always made trashy B to Z movies, but this one i believe was maliciously made extra bad by design, but then again having 40 years of experience in trash cinema doesn’t guarantee you’ll retain any know-how, or care to even put on a semblance of any competence you’ve gathered, as it was frankly barely indistiguishable from crap like Jurassic Shark, made obviously by a bunch of kids with a camera and zero experience.
Again, it took some nega-effort to make Mark Polonia look like Spielberg in comparison, but Shark Exorcist was indeed something special, not your everyday homegrown Z-grade shark trash.
So when i learned last year Donald put out a sequel, Shark Exorcist 2: Unholy Waters back in 2024, 10 years after the first one…. i knew i had to cover it, and i’m not gonna let it fester too much in my mind this time, we’re doing this now so we can move on.
Here i’d discuss the plot but we already did the bit on the review of the first Shark Exorcist, which had a premise, an idea of a plot, not really an actual plot besides the first 5 minutes, or any actual structure, just random padding, “plot lines” that go nowhere, even calling it a “narrative gibberish” it’s too kind in hindsight, since it honestly doesn’t even have an ending or a proper resolution…. it just kinda stops, and reaches a runtime of 74 minutes just because of random post-credit padding.
I can say that the shark won at the end and passed its curse to some other nun, because yes, that was the idea, a demonic shark ghost possessed a holy woman….. and the satanic shark spirit is back for more, called upon by another evil nun and with another priest that rises to confront it, the brother of the priest from the first movie, too.
And even saying that makes it sound like there’s a plot… but again, it barely qualifies, the only improvement of sorts being that this time around they don’t outright forget about it after establishing it in the first 5-10 minutes, but it’s such faint praise and amounts to little, since this migh—, ok, let’s be real, i say this IS even worse than the first Shark Exorcist.
It would have taken a master stroke of unbridled incompetence to actually top that… and somehow, Shark Exorcist 2 actually did it, the son of a satanic sea-bitch.
How it manages so escapes me, as in, how the fuck you actually manage to (mostly) regress from Shark Exorcist?
For example, i don’t remember the camera notably wobbling constantly, the wind is literally enough to have the camera wobble and shake at random… and even without wind it keeps happening though the whole movie, this isn’t limited to a single scene.
The best thing i can say about presentation is the random “heavy metal band name” font used in some of the credits (and the title screen), it somehow looks even worse than the first, most of the scenes with effects look like early 2000s aquatic themed screensavers, or look like they belong in trailers you could see for Steam Greenlight games to be vetted (remember that?), it has that shovelware garbo aesthetic, and it’s amazing how the CGI for the shark is NOTABLY worse, how the fuck is that even possible?
The audio is also utter shit, at times rivaling Jurassic Shark and the leaves crunching under the actors’ shoes at a volume highter then the dialogues’, so wildly can the audio volume fluctuate from scene to scene (the skyline scene seems recorded through an empty spinach tin can attached somwhere in the promixity of the camera, unbelievable), plus the last scene goes full Godfrey Ho, with the actors talking via editing to each others, as their conversation was clearly recorded in separate locales, most likely even different days and with different equipment.
If the scene didn’t happen to be outdoors i would have expected to see the random American flag in the background of an office or indoor place, or for someone to use an old Garfield phone, which would have improved things, even if marginally so.
I could go on, but i’ll just repeat myself, since this sequel not only has the same issues of the first film, it does everything somehow even worse, it’s even more incompently shot and put together, the acting can be even more embarassing at times, and once again it’s overly padded with filler, pointless shit just so it’s technically 74 minutes long, which is embarassing in itself.
Even more embarassing is how even the filler can be copy and pasted from the first, let’s have a random scene of a girl (this time a teen instead of a child) in an aquarium and then perusing its gifts shop with the animal plushies again in the sequel… and some of the characters arguing while buying wine in a supermarket, thrilling stuff indeed.
Also surprising is how is almost devoid of sleaze, weird considering Donald Farmer’s filmography, again, almost, but there’s less pseudo nudity and random bikini girls, guess we’ll fill that by following one of the more boring of the subplots, and actually conclude that, for a change,
Yeah, somehow Shark Exorcist 2: Unholy Waters manages the impossible, outdoing the first movie in terms of absolute incompetence, because budget as an excuse can work just so far, as we learned with the first movie and we confirm with this sequel, money is no excuse regardless.
Only nice thing i can say its that at least this time around there’s more of a “plot” and a teensy bit of structure, so the “filler” is a bit less random, but given how everything else is somehow even worse than the first, i struggle to even justifying an hypothetical 1 out of 10.
I guess it is a movie and you can see what’s going on, so yay, but the fact it topped the first movie and i genuinely hated that with my guts…. yeah, i don’t recommend it, unless you’re up for some of the worst shark movies you’ll see in your life, that’s also a struggle to watch all the way through.
I’m not even that angry anymore, i’m just baffled, bamboozled, confused how this happened.
I guess see you for when Shark Exorcist 3 lands, i half-jest but Donald Farmer has kept himself busy since 2014, that same year he made Bigfoot Exorcist, in 2022 he made Catnado, and in general it can be said he keeps himself busy, he does, as he pumps out movies every year, his latest being 2026’s Amytiville Aliens.
Because obviously, gotta get that “Amytiville-xploitation” cash.
Wise Cafe (International) 