Rating: C
Dir: Shi Qiang
Star: Qiu Pin Cheng, Liang Jing Jing, Wu Fang Yuen, Chen Ya Jing
Fuckin’ millennials and their whining. “I can’t afford my Spotify subscription. Who ate all the avocado toast? There is a giant fish trying to eat me. Make it stopppppppp…” The heart-warming thing here is realizing that this is a global phenomena, and the Chinese representatives of the species are indistinguishable from their Western siblings, in the annoying nature of their perpetual complaining. After a brief introduction in which two fishermen are eaten by an energetic combination of stock wildlife footage and third-tier CGI, we meet six members of the group in question, preparing for an ocean trip. See how long it takes before you find yourself on #TeamShark. I predict, less than five minutes.
Y’know, I actually went to the trouble of making notes here. With character names, and possibly the actors who played them. I am quite proud of that, because you know what you get when you type “Killer Shark” or even “Killer Shark movie” into your search engine of choice? Not this film. However, the major problem is, I didn’t give a damn about any of the characters. The only one to be distinguishable was the token overweight guy. A somewhat pleasant surprise was that he is not there purely as comic relief. Indeed one of the babes appears to have a thing for the sound of fat squeaking between her teeth, which is… interesting.
Counterpoint: guess which of the six (three men, three women) is first into the shark’s maw? Yeah. The excursion goes pear-shaped after they let one of the girlies take the helm – women drivers, eh? Though in her defense, the resulting plough into a reef is not entirely her fault. Two members of the party – an injured one plus Fatty – are left on the hull of the capsized craft. The other four begin paddling off, in an ill-conceived and low-energy effort to get help. Hard say which bunch ends up in worse trouble. Or which are more annoying, both groups of survivors providing a stream of loud whining, which would not be out of place on the flight-deck of an aircraft carrier.
To director Shi’s credit, he keeps things going with a good sense of pace. There’s a lot of blood in the water too, with even a small gash on the head capable of turning the surrounding waters crimson. This can only go so far to counter a largely inept mix of content. There were times when it seemed so full of stock aquatic footage, it felt like one of those African safari films from the fifties, typically made somewhere like Cincinnati. It is nice to see annoying people get eaten, and this does deliver an adequate amount in this area. I would have traded a good number of them for somebody – anybody, to be honest – whose fate I was bothered about, in the slightest.
This review is part of our feature, When Chinese Animals Attack.