Director: Misty Talley
Year: 2018
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
Upset about his home life, a troubled teen decides to take out his frustrations with his comic book series only to realize that the magical pen he received as a gift turned the titular shark creation into a ravenous real-world killing machine and must band his friends together to stop it.
Review:
Overall, this one wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could've been. One of the stronger features here is the fact that there's an incredibly enjoyable atmosphere present which gives the film a lot to like. The build-up of the Christmas-time atmosphere, filled with the lights, ornamentations and decorations that are placed around the vicinity of the attacks which draw the shark in for the killing strike, leaves quite an intriguing mark here as that provides the shark with motivation and purpose. As this takes place around the holiday season, having plenty of decorations around allows the creature the chance to strike anywhere which gets brought to bear on the various attacks within here.
Those attacks are just as much fun as well, carrying on the Christmas season theme of attacks to get plenty of nice, short shock-style attacks overall. From the initial sequence of the creature appearing at the pond starts this rather nicely by launching out of the water to grab it's victim to the boat ambush with it appearing and picking off the victim from the side of the boat, there's some rather fun attack scenes here that not only utilize the Christmas spirit but also giving this some fun attack scenes. The scenes of them battling the shark out in the water, though, provide this with the biggest action scenes where it focuses on their plans to stop it utilizing a series of conventional and then Christmas themed weaponry to stop the shark swimming around.
The other big positive to the film is the fact that there's a rather heartwarming amount of real filmmaking tactics to give this a hint of talent behind the scenes. Focusing on the rather inane idea of a shark coming to life from the work of a magical pen allows this one to work in a grounded setting here with the family drama at the center of the whole dilemma, as well as giving the relationships between the friends to really bring it to light what the shark's actually doing. There's a rather impressive setup here with this type of storyline coming into play in this type of supposedly silly shark movie that keeps this moving along nicely even without having much in the way of attacks here. Along with the strong gore and fun practical effects throughout here, these helped to hold it up over it's few minor flaws.
As with most of these films, the main issues with the film is the rather ludicrous and wholly silly-looking CGI on display for the shark, which is usually bad and is the same here. Not only does it feature the usual somewhat silly-looking effects which really highlight the poor graphics displayed, but the outlandish scenarios offered here highlight that even more by making a shark wrapped in Christmas lights with a candy-cane impaled on its head and broken light-bulbs for teeth which is all made to look even more than usually bad for these kinds of films. Likewise, the other issue is the somewhat goofy idea of the middle portion of the film going for the idea of everybody trying to find each other and continually missing the location of everyone else, making it somewhat redundant and comical despite the reality of the situation. These here aren't too bad and are the only real issues that hold it back.
Overview: **** 1/2/5
Surely one of the better and more enjoyable efforts in the channels' history, this one brought a lot of entertaining and unique concepts together to be a highlight venture for the channel. Definitely give this one a look if you're one of the aficionados of cheesy shark movies or of the channel's offerings in the past, while those who aren't swayed by those efforts should heed caution.
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