Director: Jerry Dugan
Year: 2015
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
After a series of brutal attacks, the sheriff of a small community finds that the cause is a species of shark introduced to the area years earlier by a recently-released animal smuggler and must now team up together to stop the now swarm of sharks living there from leaving the lake.
Review:
As an Action/Horror hybrid, this was a solid enough effort. Among the better features here is the fact that the Action scenes here give this one plenty of fun and exciting moments. The opening action-packed car-chase is an enjoyable enough start, showcasing the to going back-and-forth throughout the chase to make it enjoyable while the series of gun-battles held between the different sides in his house and out in the woods near the lake offers some more thrilling moments. As well, there’s a lot to like with the practical shark effects which are used more often than expected, giving this some decent prolonged encounters with the victims which makes the action featured here pretty enjoyable.
As well, other elements like the horror sections offer up some great action which is relegated nicely to the attack scenes from the sharks such as the series of ambushes are quite enjoyable. The drunk couple attacked in the lake is a solid start, as is the diver getting stalked by the shadows overhead play off incredibly well with the suspense of the unknown figure working pretty well. The more vicious attack scenes, like the parasailor attack or the stellar ambush on the shark hunter which is quite chilling with the special tactic they display while hunting, generating some fine and bloody deaths throughout here as well as setting the stage for an enjoyable finale which also contains a lot to like. These are what’s enjoyable about this one.
This one does have a few issues featured here. One of the biggest issues here is the series of uninteresting storylines and subplots that drag the pacing out to a crawl. The incidents about raising the girl through her misunderstandings of the true nature of her father, the series of investigations into the history about the animals in the area or the blossoming romance built around cliched meetings spouting off fish facts for the current case. These all manage to give this a disappointing stretch of the film where it drops the sharks from the film due to the other issues which don’t make this feel like a horror film at times.
The other problem with this one is the ridiculously continued storylines here that serve no purpose to be here. The main one that sticks out is the nature channel host who is egregiously written into the film simply to be cannon fodder for the sharks and has nothing of value here. He drops in unannounced, chews up time with the useless scenes interviewing the locals and is summarily dropped from the film soon after. There’s also a confusing subplot about the smuggler’s boss coming to visit him to get going on catching the shark which is also conveniently forgotten about and shows up resolved at the end with no on-screen payoff. These manage to stick out and cause this one to hold itself down for the most part.
Overview: ***.5/5
Despite a few areas that tend to crop up as problematic, overall this is a pretty solid Action/Horror effort which manages to give this enough to like that there’s plenty of watchable elements here. This is definitely worth a look for fans of the style, aficionadoes of the creative crew or looking for a killer shark film in general, while those who aren’t into this style or looking for more o a wild, straightforward killer shark effort should heed caution.
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