Graveyard Shark (2024) by Matthew A. Peters

Director: Matt A. Peters

Year: 2024

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Sharks

Plot:

Trying to get her show off the ground, a wannabe cryptozoologist and her cameraman arrive in a small town where the locals are convinced a humanoid shark haunts the local graveyard, and when they find the truth about the creature set out to stop its bloodsoaked rampage with their help.

Review:

There's quite a lot to enjoy with this one. Among its better qualities is a highly effective setup that provides an endearingly cheesy setup into a shockingly atypical killer shark film. The main point of treating the creature not as a creature of the sea but a cryptic that the community has encountered but has no evidence to prove the existence of the shark which draws her to the location to prove its existence with the help of the other survivors who are sure the creature’s alive. This is given a lengthy backstory about her struggles with the past involving a cryptid killing her father that helps to ensure her viewpoint to help them out, and when placed alongside the wild origin story of the creature ties the story together nicely.

That allows the film to generate a ton of fantastic encounters with the creature. The initial idea of the creature being played as a slasher villain with a series of short, shock ambushes on victims in the graveyard and surrounding woods makes for a fun time here demonstrating the different encounters by the survivors of the club where they recount the attack that brought them together as survivors which end up producing a rather fun series of ambushes that are featured throughout here. Later scenes, with the creature attacking stragglers or fighting off the creature in the graveyard there are some immensely cheesy attacks generating plenty of carnage and brutality in these scenes.

As well, there’s also the immensely fun series of cheesy elements present within this one. The main factor here is the design of the creature itself, using a humanoid hammerhead shark as the basis for the design with small human proportions, rippling muscles, and a ripped leather jacket which creates such an intriguing impression that helps to add to the cheesiness of the action present with it’s immobile mouth full of teeth selling everything nicely. As well, with the decision to play out the backstory of the creatures’ origins as in-depth and in detail as it does in the flashback allows for some charmingly bizarre moments, giving this one quite a lot to like.

This one doesn’t have too much wrong with it as it’s mainly just small nitpicks. The overlong running time that tries to infuse a bizarre sense of comedy that exists here, from detailed explanations of the extramarital affairs that spawned the creature in the first place to the psychedelic dream sequence showing her becoming awkwardly intimate with a guy in a cheap Bigfoot costume that is more likely personal preference type of scenes than anything else. The attitude of the police officers who treat everything as a joke can be tiring despite the revelations that make it all make sense, and with everything coming about with the type of low-budget origins that are featured throughout here, end up being the few small factors with this one.

Overview: ****/5

An incredibly fun cheesy shark film, there’s quite a lot to like here which makes more than enough to hold this one up over the few slight factors that don’t really amount to much anyway. Those who are fans of this style of indie feature, are curious about this one, or are fans of the creative crew will have plenty to like here while only those turned off by its style would want to heed caution.