Planet of the Sharks (2016) by Mark Atkins


Director: Mark Atkins
Year: 2016
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genres: Sharks; Post-Apocalyptic

Plot:
Stuck on an over-flooded planet, a group of survivors trying desperately to restore land mass to the surface finds that a group of sharks has gathered together to follow a leader of the creatures and must put their plans on hold to stop the deadly creatures.

Review:

This one here wasn't all that bad of a killer shark effort. One of the better features here is the surprisingly fun and enjoyably cheesy post-apocalyptic storyline presented here, which is so nicely integrated into a normal killer shark film that gets featured here in quite fine form throughout. A vast majority of this is due to the setting in the future where it's all based on the end-of-the-world scenario where it brings in the flooded surface world, the isolated segments of humanity living on floating islands in the middle of the sea and the overall look and feel of the characters in here makes this one really feel like a new concept for the creatures, and there's plenty of fun here that comes from the great action scenes that come from being put into this background.

The main start-up scene here of the easy rampage against the undefended community at sea where they rampage across the group and taking out both the fisherman on the surface as well as the buildings nearby which starts this off on a nice note, while the later attack on the supply crew where their initial harvesting the ocean celebration that draws the sharks in for them to slaughter gets turned against them when they start launching the attack against them leaping out of the water to take them out and really gets into the fun of the swarm attacking the different people going around the different buildings and levels along the scene where it's got plenty of fun action along the way. As well, the big finale where it's all about the charging sharks attacking the different sections of the facility and going onto the big battles against the remaining fish as there's a great method of finally defeating the creatures once and for all. These elements here really do work nicely here, while there's a few somewhat minor elements that hold this one down.

One of the bigger issues is the fact that there's some really lazy work done on trying to try to explain why the sharks are clearly behaving as they are. There's a scene here where they do manage to showcase that to the audience with the sequence where they tell why there's an alpha-shark controlling the others which are comprised of different species which doesn't happen in real-life yet the way it tries to go about making sure it plays out for the film here is really lazy and makes no sense as they go about it here. As well, there's plenty of the genre's usually-atrocious CGI that crops out here, which has some absolutely ridiculous work here in not only rendering the creatures who have all that ridiculously pixelated look but also feature that kind of horrible look where they don't interact with their surroundings at all and really helps to sell the terrible CGI here. Otherwise, this one wasn't all that bad.


Overview: ***/5
While there are a few issues to be had here, none of these are really as detrimental as it should be which leaves it as an enjoyable if not that impressive entry. Give this a shot if you're a fan of these particularly cheesy creature features or find this setup interesting, while most others should heed caution here.

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