Director: Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray
Year: 2015
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
After becoming stranded in the ocean, a group of scientists and their student interns looking into ways of dealing with oceanic pollution try to stop the massive, monstrous three-headed shark spawned by the pollution prowling the waters before it manages to eat it's way through the ocean.
Review:
This was a promising if slightly downbeat turn from the original. What really makes this one so much fun is the fact that there's a lot more put into this than expected, especially in terms of the story. The effects of pollution and the after-effects it has on hybridization, from the mutations and different organisms found within here read a lot better than normal concepts here, as the research station and the different waste-byproducts found throughout the first half here clearly gives us a clear-cut origin story for the creature that explains the mutation nicely, as well as giving it some subtly-accomplished background for the different ways in which this one tries to warn about the effects of such matters which are then given a straight-forward response later on with the scenes of the creature swallowing up the pollution in the seas as it charges forward for the attacks.
Those are also really well-done here, making a perfectly exciting action-packed effort here with the opening attack on the station sending it up in flames while it smashes into and destroys the lower levels in a fantastic scene, the race to get away on their small boat manages a rather nice suspense scene with the group in the water where the creature is known to be at and there's a fine chase scene as it goes after them attempting to get away once safely on-board. As well, the highlight is the attack on the party cruise, as despite their warnings the creature continually bangs into the ship to bring it down resulting in plenty of great deaths, including the first of several triple-shots for each head, and the scramble to get off the sinking boat provides a rather fine conclusion here with the panic-stricken passengers attempting to get on-board while the boat continually sinks and gets ripped to pieces. While the gunfight with the fishermen is fair enough as well, and the opening manages to get some nicely bloody kills amongst it's massive body count offerings, these here are enough to hold this off from a few noticeable flaws here.
The biggest of which is something that certainly wasn't a problem before in that the action scenes take forever to get set-up. It cuts back-and-forth numerous times to shots of the boat racing to a scene of attack or the creature slowly swimming after them and keeps cutting back to the others it's going after several times before the initial attack occurs, apparently in an attempt at building suspense but instead just seemingly taking it out of the scene by taking forever and dragging it out needlessly. There's also the rather lame way the creature is defeated, which makes no sense and doesn't really seem like a big rousing conclusion, being something that would've happened over time eventually and really lacks any kind of dramatic input here by coming off as it does. The shark does look better than expected and comes off really well, but even still it's not enough to hold off these issues.
Overview: ***/5
While still enjoyable and highly worthwhile for the most part, this is a slight downgrade from the original effort that manages to lower this one just enough that it's a noticeable drop even though it's still fun. Give it a look if you're a fan of the original, looking for a cheesy shark movie or appreciate this style overall but those that aren't interested in it or find themselves turned off by the flaws should heed caution.
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