Rating: C-
Dir: Robin Christian
Star: Logan Borsari, Audra Schildhouse, Garrett Forster, Summer Olshefski
The rating above is more based on entertainment value, rather than cinematic quality. This is bottom-tier shark cinema, on which even Mark Polonia might look down. However, for all its flaws – and these are many – I was never bored by this. Annoyed, certainly. But mostly, in much the same way you get irrtiated when your cat starts energetically zooming at five in the morning. What did you expect? This begins in the Gulf of Mexico, where a group of yahoos on a fishing trip succeed only in giving a bull shark a taste for blood. Next thing you know, it’s whizzing up the Mississippi, somewhere past St. Louis and chilling in a reservoir.
Its mission, should it choose to accept it, is apparently to finish the job of eating one of those yahoos, whose leg it bit off in the Gulf. Before it can do that though, the shark spends its time terrorizing a group of teenagers on a floating platform, out in the middle of the reservoir. These specimens of modern youth are, by and large, the best advertisements for full-term abortion I’ve seen in a film for a while. At least there’s some variety in their uselessness from meathead Nate (Forster) through to sensitive guy Lance (Borsan). Naturally, they fight for the attention of Isabella (Schildhouse), though style is cramped by the presence of her kid sister, Ellie (Olshefski), who says helpful things like, “I’m almost a teenager!”
The stupidity on view here is industrial strength, and relentless. They might as well have titled this Poor Decisions, Vol. 1, and been done with it, considering I lost count of the number of times the platform’s inhabitants topple off it, are pushed, or flat-out jump into the water which is the shark’s domain. In the teens’ defense, the idiocy appears county wide, including the pilot of a conveniently passing microlight, and the one-legged yahoo, who gets out of the lake, but forgets to until the rope he has around his waste, allowing the shark to drag him back into the water. I’d almost be inclined to call it a parody of shitty shark movies, but writer-director Christian rarely demonstrates much evidence of self-awareness.
I did enjoy the scene where Lori (Meitar Paz) was trying to distract the shark from the shore. I can’t speak for the fish, but I was certainly distracted. Ms. Paz has a great career in front of her, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Other highlights include: a shark which is so fake it makes Spielberg’s Bruce look like the real thing; a score which is clearly the same notes as Jaws, marginally re-ordered; and the least convincing “knocked unconscious” scene of the 21st century. It leads to a genuinely ludicrous climax, in a genre where the bar is quite high in this area. I’ll leave you with some examples of the memorable dialogue:
- “I still remember my leg in its mouth. The brain, it remembers.”
- “My dead boyfriend’s pants? They funny to you?”
- “You were really inside that shark?” “I don’t recommend it.”