Rating: C
Dir: Cody Clarke, Chloe Pelletier, Kailer Scopacasa, Ryan Lambert.
Star: Shane Russo, Milena Kirsten, Belle Sinclair Pace, Brent Michal.
This franchise spun up, from a challenge by YouTuber Joel Haver. Instead of watching the Oscars, you have the time of the broadcast to shoot a feature-length film. This started in 2022, and Clarke has been involved every year since, beginning with Oscar’s – note the carefully placed apostrophe. But a single feature? That’s child’s play. In 2023, Clarke and his friends opted to shoot four movies during the Oscar broadcast. Simultaneously. Fast Shark and its sequel, Fast Shark II: Faster Shark were made in one room, using cloth backdrops to simulate the beach, underwater and other environments. At the same time, Fast Shark III: Fastest Shark and Fast Shark IV: Fastester Shark were being made next door.
I combine all four into one article for a few reasons. Firstly, they are barely features by the strict IMDb definition of 45 minutes. Even reaching that requires… padding. The first film has a caption at the end which explicitly says, “I’m literally just running the clock to 45+ minutes”. With the exception of #4, they are all much of a muchness. An improvised seaside universe, entirely populated by twenty-somethings, bicker, fall in and out of love, and are subject to the predations of the titular fish. It’s a non-lethal predator, although capable of attacking both below and above the water. It’s mostly irritating, though can knock a wedding ring out of your hand, if you are careless enough to give it the opportunity.
Naturally, there is no actual shark. The clearest shots are in later entries, and it’s a grey, elbow-length glove worn by the director, waving his hand about to simulate a shark (top). You’ll notice the same people cropping up from entry to entry, and there is actual story progression between them – surprising given the simultaneous and improv nature of shooting. For instance, the pizza shop belonging to Molly (Kirsten) and Polly (Pace) decide to start selling shark-repellent flavoured pizza. It does not go well, due to the unfortunate digestive side-effects. Pro- and anti-shark factions form. But, to be honest, you could watch any one of #1-3: the others don’t add much and feel largely superfluous. I laughed harder at the trivia quiz – more padding – which ends #3, than anything in it.
If I could have figured out how, I might have watched all four simultaneously. It seems appropriate, given that’s how they were made – you can often hear dialogue from one of the other movies bleeding over. As noted, #4 does find a new direction, opting to go meta, and be about the efforts of a director (Lambert) – a hitman in previous installments – trying to make a movie about a fast shark. His relationship with the cast is fractious, to put it mildly. He replaces “Action” with “Let’s see it, ladies!”, finding the former too violent, and wanting “Something I could say that would be better with your delicate sensibilities.” This is probably the… I’m not going to say “best”, because these films, quite deliberately, seek to exist entirely outside the very notion of quality by any standard metrics. Let’s go with “most interesting” of the quartet, being about zero-budget, one-take cinema rather just being it.