Director: Christine Whitlock
Year: 2008
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
Following a series of strange incidents, residents of a lakeside community grow convinced that a creature is loose in the lake which is proven true when a scientist finds that a ravenous bull shark has entered the community and must race to stop it before the shark disrupts an important celebration.
Review:
This was a rather fun silly shark indie. One of the positives here is the generally silly if still overly worthwhile setup that manages to bring about all the necessary elements required to move this type of film along. The early setup of the community around the lake, where this focuses on the different random selection of individuals who operate in the area, with the multitude of fishermen, divers, or just about anyone else that come out onto the shark, creates a wholly intriguing setup that allows for the opportunity to get to know what’s going on in the situation. Realizing that the expansive opportunity to worry about needing money from the sailing competition hosted by the community, the various locals trying to deal with the strange attacks occurring in the area, and the ones who are attracted to the story for their own gain.
This provides the opportunity for a series of cheesy shark attacks involving the creature continually appearing to strike the locals in the community. Relying on the repetitive if still solid enough tactic of managing to constantly knock a group of clueless individuals into the water somehow and then chomp on them while flailing helplessly in the water, this is repeated often enough that there’s quite a bit of a body count that’s developed here whether it be clueless fisherman standing on their boat, passerby who lose their balance, or just plain being clumsy enough to fall into the water for no reason. This is a fine setup provides for the finale where there are some intriguing combat tactics to try to hold the shark back leading to a somewhat goofy and cheesy series of setpieces to end this on for its positive points.
There are some factors here that hold this one back. The most obvious of these issues is the generally obvious low-budget limitations that make for a hard time getting into this one due to the different factors popping up throughout here. The guerilla shooting style and production values present will be big glaring issues, while the lack of gore or special effects here will also be another big issue, especially with the actual appearance of the shark. As mentioned, the repeated notion of the attacks being simply knocking someone into the water where they then slip under the surface so it’s cheap, lazy, and grows tiresome with everything being the same regardless of how many times it happens. The attempts at comedy are excruciatingly unfunny, the one-line quips made by the scientist after every attack are painfully unnecessary divergences that don’t mean anything, and the lack of logic in what’s going on makes everything come off worse than expected with everyone being criminally ignorant or shallow for no reason. These all make the film quite underwhelming overall.
Overview: */5
An appropriately silly and cheesy killer shark film, there’s enough here to be somewhat worthwhile even though there are plenty of issues here that do hold this one down. Those who appreciate this kind of genre fare or are the most ardent cheesy killer shark movie aficionados will be the main target for this one while most others out there should heed extreme caution if not outright avoid it.
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