Rating: B-
Dir: Dongsheng Hu, Shixing Xu
Star: Ye Huan, Lo Liquan, Shen Wenjun, Michelle Ye
Well, this is unexpected. It appears to be a Chinese remake of the classic Roger Corman B-movie of the same name. Did the makers actually pay Corman? Or is this a particularly shameless knockoff, which decided not to bother changing the name, on the basis it was intended purely for a Chinese audience? However, they forgot about certain bootleg movie channels on YouTube, which uploaded the film – albeit with stock music dubbed in intermittently, to fool the automated copyright algorithm. This just adds to the surreal nature of things. You’re watching a giant shark/octopus hybrid rampaging around a cruise ship, while an enthusiastic musak version of The Campdown Races plays loudly in the background.
The ship is actually the base for genetic medical research being carried out by Fan Jingya (Ye). Her motives are good, seeking a treatment for the currently incurable disease with which her young son is afflicted. Her boss, Chen Tiankun (Shen), is not so altruistic, and opts to cut corners, leading to the shark and octopus crossbreed growing exponentially in size and aggression. Just as it breaks free, an international SWAT team shows up, under Lu Fei (Lo), to arrest Chen and shut the whole shady operation down. To complete that mission, they’re first going to have to live long enough. Oh, and Fei just so happens to be the ex-husband of Jingya, adding a strong personal element to the stakes here.
Outside of the titular creature – shark at the front, tentacles at the back, both ends highly irritated – there’s not much connection to the original. This plays its ludicrous concept straight, rather than with tongue plugged firmly in cheek. There are some weird elements which never quite mesh, such as the opening, where a giant – and I mean, giant – octopus beaches itself. Jingya and her team carve a vagina-like opening in its corpse and climb into its interior, which resembles a flesh cathedral, finding the first sharktopus within. Credit is also deserved, for the film really leaning into the “heroic sacrifice” trope, and doing so from an unexpected angle. Not that it matters much since we are here for the mayhem. How does it stand up there?
Rather well, providing you don’t think too much about the biology e.g. the hybrid is dubiously able to survive almost entirely out of water (though octopuses can last up to 30 minutes, breathing through their skin). The CGI is mostly acceptable (the ship is worse than the creature) and there appear to be some practical effects, which you don’t often see in this genre. My favourite sequence was definitely the end, where the monster is big enough, it can tip the ship onto its end. You more or less have a sharktopus remake of Titanic, including that heroic sacrifice mentioned above. This is completely ridiculous, and all the more amusing for that. The bootleg rendition of Chicago accompanying it is a valuable assist. It’s all not quite Anaconda, but official or not, I think Corman would be impressed.
This review is part of our feature, When Chinese Animals Attack.