Director: Mark Atkins
Year: 2012
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
When a series of strange attacks and accidents on a remote beach are found to be the result of a mutated species of shark that can live in the sand, a small community band together to stop them before they ruin an upcoming music festival organized to take place on the local beaches.
Review:
This was a pretty cheesy Sci-Fi Channel entry. Among the better features here is the fact that this one is pretty much filled with the normal prerequisites for the style in grand fashion. This starts with the sharks themselves where there’s a lot to like including the concept of the shark's habitat for hunting along the beaches which has an inherently goofy yet believable explanation for the ability to live and survive in the sand. That is also helped along by the film's rather nice-looking design for the sharks when they're seen from a distance or only fleetingly, since they look less so in close-up.
Still, the films’ at it’s best with the rather impressive amount of action featured here which keeps this one quite enjoyable and high-energy. The first half to this one is pretty much contained to fun scenes around the beach, from the chase of the bikers across the sand dunes, the scenes of the shark jumping out of the sand to grab victims off the beach and the highlight of the first half in the big encounter on the beach where everyone realizes the sharks are alive. Featuring some solid jump-scares and an ingenious method of dispatching the creature, its a solid and enjoyable start to things.
This is continued with the second-half concert where the picks up quite nicely. Realizing they’re still alive and yet keeping it secret, that this keeps the party going where all the big shark attacks take place is just glorious cheesy fun all around. With the series of swarming attacks on beachgoers looking for a fun time at the event, jumping out of the sand to grab them and leading to a host of impressive confrontations trying to stop them as well as the ingenious method of trying to finally defeat the swarm of sharks on the beach, this who section is action-packed and quite exciting. Alongside the large body count, these are what make this one rather worthwhile and watchable overall.
However, it does have some issues. The biggest flaw here is the obvious amount of time with the CGI for the creatures which stick out and features the usual assortment of issues with these films. Not being properly formatted into the screen, changing size frequently and featuring the kind of shimmering effect that highlights the usual visual style associated with these films. As well, there’s also an issue in the finale with the continued use of a cliché with the discovery of more creatures here becomes routine and not so much a surprise anymore as most films use that feature. It’s hardly a shock due to that, really holds out as this one's main flaws.
Overview: ****/5
A highly enjoyable and cheesy killer shark effort which is just the kind of goofy and silly effort the channel excels at, there’s not much to dislike in this one. Give it a look if you’re a huge fan of the channel’s output, looking at cheesy shark films or just cheesy films in general while those who aren’t into those at all should heed extreme caution.
Comments
Post a Comment