47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) [REVIEW] | Mayan Ruins Of The Deep

While not exactly loved, 47 Meters Down did get a decent reception and turned out a profit, which means the studio hired back Johannes Roberts to write and direct another one of these “sequel but not really”, often called by the more elegant definition of “stand-alone sequels”.

You know the drill: no continuity, same basic premise, completely different cast, you don’t really need to have seen the previous movie, etc.

Well, actually the premise it’s a bit different this time around, even if – of course – it involves sharks, like you expect and want. Like the subtitle implies, this time around isn’t about a cage dive gone awry, but a group of girls that go scuba diving in a sunken Mayan city, only to be hunted by a group of sharks that happen to be swimming in it.

I mean, why the fuck not? Especially if you can get away with titling your movie after “cage diving” despite it barely have relevance to the story, this 47 Meters Down non-sequel can do whatever he likes, even sound like if someone accidentally made a possible Everblue horror adaptation.

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Samurai Warriors 5 PS4 DEMO [HANDS-ON]

So, Samurai Warriors 5 it’s gonna be out in a week, and Koei Tecmo decided to release a demo for it, so might as well give it a hands-on, since i won’t be reviewing it at launch.

I did eventually pre-order the Treasure Edition for it (not the collector’s one since Koei basically wanted 70 more bucks just for 5 tiny acrylic stands, fuck off), so i will be playing it, but i won’t have a review out, as i would like to do a retrospective of the Dynasty Warriors series, and maybe the same for the sister series Samurai Warriors, and “do” the games in order.

MAYBE i will just do a quick EXPRESSO review, but for sure not an extensive one.

The demo offers two maps/scenarios from the first chapter of the game, and four playable characters to pick a team of 2 from Hideyoshi Hashiba, No, Eiyasu Tokugawa and Toshiee Maeda (with Nobunaga Oda playable in the story mode but not in Free Mode, at least in this demo offering), with the ability to carry over the save data to the full game when it releases.

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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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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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Empire Of The Sharks (2017) [REVIEW] | Fury Boat

As you might remember, i frankly hated Planet Of The Sharks, so i post-poned the review of Empire Of Sharks, which i also incorrectly described as a sequel.

Because it isn’t: completely different cast, completely different characters, no continuity, you know the drill by now.

It still kind of a follow up to Planet Of The Sharks, as in this is The Asylum trying again to make work the ill-conceived- and under budgeted – mash up of Mad Max, Waterworld and a shark movie.

I don’t why exactly they felt the need to try again, since i’m not even sure it raked in much profit for the Asylum, but i guess Mark Atkins wanted another go at the concept, so this time he directed but also wrote the script himself, which is not necessarily encouraging piece of info.

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Open Water 3: Cage Dive (2017) [REVIEW] | Wisdom N’ The

11 years after Adrift, Lionsgate felt the time was right to resume the “series”, and might as well drop any pretense, so they just released it as Open Water 3 right away, which surely prompted viewers to ask “was there a second one?”. Again, not that it matters because these are completely standalone stories, so you could waltz in theathers in 2017 without any real need to see the “previous ones”.

Not that many moviegoers are bound by that anyway.

If the subtitle sound somewhat familiar, it’s because this third installment in the Open Water series clearly took wind of what Dimension Films was cooking up with 47 Meters Down, it’s not that there’s a copyright on the concept of “cage dive scuba session goes wrong, with sharks”, but this one was released the same year, just 2 months after 47 Meters Down, so comparisons are bound to be made..

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Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) [REVIEW] | Sequel Sharks

What happens when you get to do a sequel that’s really not a sequel, but another iteration on the same basic premise? You get slapped for asking obvious and stupid rethorical questions, as you know damn well the industry will conjure series out of unrelated movies anyway, so doesn’t matter that not even the production company is the same as Open Water, we’ll release it with a different name first and then slap “Open Water 2” when it hits home video, passing the original title as a subtitle. Not to be confused with the 1993 movie by Christian Duguay, also called “Adrift”.

This one is directed by Hans Horn, also behind german produced TV movie like Death Water (Tod aus der Tiefe) and with a new movie in pre-production, Going Down, which sound like it’s gonna be an unofficial Open Water or a rip-off. But we’ll see about that.

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Shark Month BEGINS!

As promised, a monthful of shark movies starts now, but you’ll find it’s not quite totally about sharks, and some other ferocious fishes might be spotlighted for one reason or another, because here at Wise Cafe International we don’t discriminate about people getting eaten by anything or anyone… in movies.

But of course sharks are the main protagonist, it’s Shark Month after all!

Enjoy!

(btw, just managed to finally see A Promising Young Woman, holy shit!)

[EXPRESSO] A Quiet Place Part II (2021) | Hush Of Us

I wasn’t sure if i wanted a sequel to A Quiet Place, as i was perfectly satisfied… heck, more than that, with both the finale and the movie itself, one of the best ones i saw that year, had everything you could want from a horror thriller, from fairly original premise to great acting, excellent creature effects, tense atmosphere, great characters, etc.

But i guess the combination of it being surprising (as it came from a director that previously didn’t explore or dabble in horror), acclaimed by everyone, AND being a surprise big financial hit made John Krasinki, Platinum Dunes and 20^th Centhury Fox think of making a follow up, and it’s finally in theathers, another of the many movies delayed for months-years due this goddamn pandemic.

Following the events of the first movie, the Abbott family is forced to venture outside of the house they took refuge in and in doing so confront the human survivors of this post-apocalyptic world, still thriving with the blind deadly creatures attracted by sound.

Gotta admit, my fears of this sequel being somewhat of a cash-in were quickly shattered, as it manages to move forwards the story about this family surviving in the post-apocalypse, to give more context to the events that led up to the creatures appearing, and to develop the survival aspects even more thanks to them having to face not just the monsters, while giving way for character arcs.

All still done with minimal use of dialogue and sound, with a great atmosphere, some really scary – genuinely scary – moments, good action sequences, excellent acting, likeable characters, amazing creature effects yet again, all packed extremely tight in less than 100 minutes, no minute is wasted for the sake of it, at all.

Noteworthy sequel, and great movie all around.