Director: Mario N. Bonassin
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Sharks
Plot:
Taking a special cruise ship journey, a woman and several crew members are knocked overboard and stranded in the middle of shark-infested waters in the middle of the ocean, and seek safety on a small island nearby, forcing the ship’s crew to brave those same shark-filled waters to rescue them.
Review:
This one wasn’t too bad for what it was trying to do. One of the better factors to be had here is the rather fun storyline that tries to mix several different styles of shark-attack films into something new and original in the genre. The concept of the cruise ship voyage heading off into the ocean and a series of mishaps enables the daughter and several other crew members to fall overboard, where they stumble upon the deserted island sanctuary to keep them from being eaten by the man-eating sharks in the area, offers the kind of fun setup that differs significantly from traditional killer shark films. Rather than force the group of survivors to work their way back to shore the entire time or even have the ship come and rescue them, they make their way to an island and try to get shelter while a secondary rescue mission takes place involving the mother and several other crew members trying to help save her.
This setup is a great way to give this a bit of a change as there’s a lot of fun to be had in both scenarios. The island sequences bring about some solid survival tropes where they have to work together despite obvious differences between them as they have to get her wounds healed, find shelter, and stay warm. With these bringing about various scenes of them trying to get her leg cleaned, fashion weapons to defend themselves, or barely escape from the sharks just before they can strike, some fun tropical island survival scenarios in play are quite fun. These are mixed rather nicely with the scenes of the rescue mission traveling across the water trying to find them, finding several decent sequences of the sharks hindering their mission and coming to attack them as the sharks are shown to be quite a bit more intelligent by accidentally setting up scenarios to knock them off one by one on the way to the island.
That all leads to the great finale, where this one manages to offer up some intriguing and original action here to give this some different enough concepts in play. The island scenes are incredibly fun, with the whole thing sinking beneath the sea and forcing them into fight-or-flight mode, trying to wade through the water to keep the sharks at bay. These are handled incredibly well and come off quite plausible, using genuine tactics to try to fight them off to stay adrift in the ocean long enough for them to be rescued, and it is just fun enough to be a solid and likable way to end this. As well as this fun encounter, there’s also a lot to like with the concurrent rescue mission coming to the middle of the ocean to save them, as the ways of trying to get there are handled with the kind of interruptions that keep her out of the way until the finale when they can be rescued, all of which are generally solid enough to be worthwhile at holding this up.
There are some minor issues here that bring this one down. The most egregious factor in this one is the absolutely idiotic and moronic storyline about why it took so long for the crew to notice the passengers going overboard, as a situation like that would be an absolute priority to stop and safely attempt to get them out of the water, but here there’s such a delay in notification that comes about through deliberate meddling for no reason that it feels more like a genuine conspiracy than anything else. That’s especially true later on when it starts to bring about more hints that something’s specifically preventing them from getting found, and the whole thing feels incredibly weird and awkwardly shoehorned into this kind of story that doesn’t need it. As well, there’s also the rather obvious CGI featured for the sharks, which aren’t too bad for the style but still makes itself known quite heavily and obviously, being enough to hold this one down overall.
Overview: ***.5/5
An exceptionally worthwhile cheesy shark film, this one manages to get a lot of worthwhile factors here that manage to keep this one going against the few detrimental factors present. Those with an appreciation for the kind of genre fare here or the kind of approach attempted here will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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