Director: EJ Marshall
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
Heading off into the wilderness, a group of women trying to prepare for a special photoshoot at a remote cabin in the countryside finds the area home to a series of massive, mutated sharks driven to kill by a special pheromone-laced bikini brand they’re going to wear and must get away alive.
Review:
Overall, this was a pretty problematic and underwhelming genre effort. Among the better elements with this one is the seemingly goofy and implausible storyline that manages to become somewhat more engaging the more this goes on. The whole idea presented here, involving the team gathering together at the house as a means of preparing for a special photoshoot and finding a brand of bikinis to use for the show and finding the whole thing was built by a devious misogynist looking to create a situation where his actions are designed to protect a species of shark that can feed on mankind, serves to make for an intriguing and promising storyline. The way it starts to work itself out as the film goes along, from the early attacks that take place featuring the random girls looking into the bikinis being sold and trying to piece together the clues regarding how the process works, to what the sharks are capable of doing and why the madman is setting the plot in motion.
This setup works nicely enough to provide the film with the kind of cheesy, appropriately silly action. The sharks being mutated to where they can survive on dryland and chase after the group whether it’s around the woods of the lake or the house itself, makes this rather fun as the sight of them sliding around on their bellies chasing victims in the woods or down woodland trails is a fantastic visual, helping to sell the helplessness of the situation as it correlates nicely with the burgeoning discoveries about what’s going on. There’s also the fun of the sharks chomping on victims and ripping them to pieces, giving this a great bit of cheese alongside the rest of the action, provided that you can overlook the big flaw here where the amount of implausibility needed to buy into the plot might be way too much to handle. There’s little sense in what’s going on being realistic, as the concept of the toxic parasite infecting the fabric of the particular bikinis and forcing the rampage that comes under his command.
Aside from that, there are some issues with how everything plays out at the beginning. The whole motivation for the secondary couple to show up by trying to clear out the house that their grandfather had rented out and finding the discarded elements of the bikini experiment is immensely clumsy and illogical as this makes no sense how he got involved in the experiment in the first place, and just serves to get the group to the house so they can meet up with the mother who can fill in everyone on the plot developments they haven’t filled out yet. There’s some clunky exposition here requiring these different plot points to come together, especially once the third sidestory in the second half starts to develop involving the deranged boyfriend getting his pregnant sidepiece to get rid of the child so he can stay with his current girlfriend, which just makes for some immensely unpleasant viewing as this goes along. Combined with the usual assortment of lousy CGI trying to pull everything off and a decided lack of sleaze that this could’ve gone through, these are all that hold this one down.
Overview: */5
A massively disappointing if still watchable genre effort, there’s enough to like here so it’s not a complete waste, but the series of issues here are pretty damaging overall and hold this one down heavily. Those with an appreciation for this type of approach or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, but most others out there should heed extreme caution.
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