Director: Paul Shapiro
Year: 2005
Country: USA/South Africa
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
Arriving in Florida for Spring Break, a young woman catches up with her friends at their beach house and goes off into the local Spring Break scene, and after throwing a house party where some friends urge them to take a boat ride out find a group of sharks in the area and must save their friends.
Review:
This one actually wasn't all that bad at all. The most impressive thing about this movie is the amount of gore shown in a made-for-TV film like this. However, don't go into this thinking that we physically see limbs being bitten off or flesh being sliced. The movie's idea of gore is seeing massive amounts of blood spread from the area around the victim. Seeing a blood cloud is not gore, but at least it was something that I could say was there. Most of that comes from the surprisingly more frequent attacks that come off throughout here, and while most result in nothing more serious than a victim falling into the water from a boat and that blood cloud appearing, they’re done often enough to keep this interesting.
In addition to this more expected blood, it does have a few good moments in it when it turns into a more overt creature feature. The finale is a real highlight, as we get two big attacks here, one out in the ocean and the other is perhaps one of the greatest scenes in shark movie history as over a dozen sharks literally attack a floating platform on the beach at once, resulting in well over a couple dozen deaths, tons of blood-splatter, and even some cheesy death scenes as well. Based on the sharks attacking the beach with no caution and circling a floating platform picking off the divers and those who fall off, this is a sight to see. It's also worth noting the sharks aren't CGI at all, which gives it another point to hold up over the negative points.
There isn’t much really wrong here. The main thing really holding this one back is that the movie is made for the MTV crowd, which means the first half of the film was a typical teen drama that centers on a dull, completely pointless love triangle and a totally watered-down, PG-13 feel for spring break. The film is full of pop songs from current bands, stylized camera work, and tons of women in bikinis and thongs. This last part only works when it is spread liberally throughout the film, instead of in the first few minutes as a couple of people can be seen in bikinis during the party scenes, but it still isn't enough. This watered-down feeling is capped off by an unnecessary attempted rape in a shark movie that merely manages to keep the sharks out of the movie so it can make the perpetrator less likable for no reason.
The other one of its biggest weaknesses is the kinetic cutting of the film's action scenes. It follows in the school of hyper-fast cuts from different angles to make the scene feel more exciting but instead makes it look so confusing we have to wait until after it is over to know what is going on. It gets aggravating because you want to see the action uninterrupted, and this tactic prevents that from happening. It also reverts to a rather familiar and yet excruciating tactic during the finale where it features several unbelievable interruptions that cause the film to keep going on when it should’ve ended at several points earlier as it tries to build suspense due to these aspects. While it would've been much better had it dropped most of the beginning, when it finally manages to get going it's actually enjoyable.
Overview: ***.5/5
This might bore and anger off hard-core horror fans, but it may serve the purpose of getting younger people into the genre looking for something accessible without being extreme or over-the-top. Enjoying this film may prove to be a stepping stone for younger people who may have an interest and want to get into the genre or are just general creature feature fans. Hard-core fans, stay farther away than a ten-foot pole from this movie.
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