Director: Misty Talley
Year: 2015
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Shark Island
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
Arriving on a secluded island getaway, a group of friends find the area's research center has lost control of a shark infected with a gruesome virus turning other sharks into mindless zombie sharks and must hold off the attacks in order to escape.
Review:
This one was slightly disappointing but didn't really slip down as low as it could've. What really seems to hold this one back here is the rather bland CGI here, which seems to be going off even worse than ever and really manages to showcase some of the absolute worst effects in the scene. These sharks look absolutely ridiculous with wholly unnatural swimming moments as they seem to swim with a rapid-fire back-and-forth motion that captures none of the grace and fluidity of the real thing, not to mention the fact that they tend to jerk around and sputter across frame at such distractingly unnatural speeds that there's no doubt about their origins.
None of these, though, are as bad as the fact that the film decides to go for entirely CGI backgrounds during each of their scenes, so the lame pixelated images are just wholly unconvincing even before putting a badly-rendered shark on the scene, and on the whole this one really offers up very few moments where there's anything remotely natural or believable about the effects here and it had done a far better job than expected recently with this format. What works against these effects even more is the fact that this one had a lot more going for it elsewhere, since that just makes the badness of the effects stick out that much more.
The biggest plus here with this one is the fact that there's a ravel novel and intriguing story here that seems to be so natural and logical that it's a wonder it hadn't been done before, for this one utilizes the concept of a zombie virus and turns it into an animal attack effort which is quite enjoyable here with this one really getting some nice work in building off the effects and motivations of the virus. This is accomplished through the scientist actually being on the side of humanity for once and not trying to create the zombies for their own purpose and they get out of hand, but an actual and honest reason for creating them and then actually trying to do the right thing here and clean it up which is a nice touch.
Likewise, there's also the film's nicely done action scenes here which are all of the shorter attacks but still the frequency here is enough to make them work as this one goes for all sorts of ambushes in the shallow beaches and a few feet away from shore, while the zombie attacks that come about offer a nice way to get something going out of the water where it's feasible to be safe from the sharks, as well as providing this one with some solid gore as well. Overall these here were enough to make it watchable but not enough to hold off the big flaws here.
Overview: *** 1/2/5
While it has a few rather big flaws, overall this is nowhere near as bad as it could've been which ends up leaving this one as a flawed if still enjoyable effort. Give this one a shot if you're into these kinds of low-budget efforts or find this type of effort intriguing, while those that want more substance from their creature features should heed caution.
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