Film Review: Shark Night (2011)

I at times have become a bit of a sucker for shark movies due to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.  Granted Mr. Spielberg didn’t know much about sharks, because it would be pretty scary to see a massive shark jump out of water to go after its prey.  Sharks are pretty amazing sea creatures and I love shark week.  So, it doesn’t matter how bad it is or what popular actors are in the movie, I want to see it. There has been so many giant creature or flesh eating water creature movies that it does becomes mundane, but it is like sex.  Just because you have done it with someone doesn’t mean that someone can’t do it differently. So naturally I was curious about “Shark Night”-3D

~~Warning spoilers ahead~~

Set in Louisiana, the movie begins with a young woman in the water having some fun at a lake.  Naturally she is not alone and her male companion is horsing around with her and tosses her bathing suit top further away.  The cliché of fetching the bathing suit top when there is no one else out there was a dead give away that she was going to be eaten, especially with the guy mysteriously going back to land.  I mean if you are a guy, why the hell would you take your female friend’s top off and then just swim to shore.  I don’t know, but doesn’t anyone find it a bit odd when they watch the movie.  Of course this guy could be a douche bag/asshole that many women are attracted to.  We can chalk it up to that.

She gets eaten and we are taken to Tulane University campus where we follow Malik (Sinqua Walls), and of course we see a couple of people, Sara (Sara Paxton), Nick (Dustin Milligan), Beth (Katharine McPhee), Maya (Alyssa Diaz), Blake (Chris Zylka) and Gordon (Joel David Moore) enjoying their random studies.  Things come to a story basis when Gordon and Nick are having some banter until Malik barges in and gives his tutor Nick some shit with the assumption that he failed a class.  Another total cliché with the ultimate psyche move and upon learning that he passed the class there is going to be an awesome weekend getaway at the lovely Sara’s lake house.

The seven friends venture forth to the seemingly secluded lake where they stop at a local bait shop where Maya stays outside and is getting harassed by Red (Joshua Leonard). Malik comes out and defends his Latina girlfriend. Red’s friend Dennis (Chris Carmack) comes out and also gets tangled into this stand off.  Till Sara comes out and calms the situation, but you can tell there is something between Dennis and Sara. Everyone leaves to go on their merry little ways.  Sara does this whole bad girl routine with the boat they are on and tries to out run the local water-law enforcements to find out that the Sheriff Sabin (Donal Logue), enjoyed the little chase as he drinks a beer with them. 

Granted another cliché is the local small town sheriff allows the local kids to get away with anything and not the “out of towners”.  I understand with most horror movies, they feel the need to add the same story plot of someone dies in the start of the movie, some bad history with the local people and of course the predictable of what is going to happen next. 

While 3 of the friends stay on land as the other 4 decide to go off and play in the boat with the typical water skiing.  It is always the same thing.  The person is having fun, but when the person calls to them to get them off the water, they all laugh and giggle and ASSume they are joking.  Yes, the “Ass” in assume is bigger because they all make themselves look like asses.  There is the typical accidental mishap and when they finally find Malik who swims to shore with a missing arm. They all do the fucking typical blame game, but Nick is a pre-med student and dives in to the water to search for the arm.  Granted the action-swim sequence when he finds the arm and the shark finds him.  YUM! You can guess what happens…no, Nick doesn’t die, but he out swims the shark. Okay, do people really know how fast sharks swim??
Steven Spielberg didn’t know much about sharks in the 70’s when Jaws came out.  A giant killer man-eater great white is pretty fucking scary back then.  Nobody out swam Jaws.  You was in the water and you was lunch. Simple and that is what sharks are.  The perfect killing machines.  Simplicity at its best.

Naturally there is the typical panicking and the pre-med student, Nick stabilizes Malik.  Yet, the funny thing is that another horror movie cliché is the non-working cell phone.  No one can get reception in the crisis and Sara has no landline to this fabulous family getaway on a salt water lake.  {{Yawns}}.  Nick talks to Sara about there is a man eating shark in the lake and she tells him that there is hurricane gates that lead to the ocean and that possibly can explain how this shark got there.  Yet, in this typical let’s have fun scenario of the whole jet skiing and boat driving there is always the typical “Oh you fucked up” with the first boat ride to the house. Where was the shark at??

They decide to take Malik to the hospital because he only has a few hours so he can attach his arm or remain that way.  Yet, no one seems to realize that sharks are attracted to blood and Malik is bleeding in the boat.  Of course the other typical cliché is that no one sits down in the fucking boat. I mean seriously Sara, Nick, Malik and Maya are in this boat.  Malik just got his arm ripped off by a hungry man eater and people sit on the edge? That is a recipe for disaster.  Blood leaking out, person sitting on the edge of the boat while the boat is driven by panicky people and a hungry shark in the water. 

At this stage of the movie, we have no idea how many actual sharks are out there.  I mean it’s called Shark Night, so I am thinking it’s only one shark.  Shark was back to eat Malik like the whole Captain Hook ordeal. Surprising Maya falls off with a shark pursuing them and well she gets eaten.  They turn to save her, but it’s too late and their boat malfunctions and they go crashing in to the gas pump at the boathouse.  Alarming everyone else on shore. Again there is the story loophole.  The boat was going really fast away from the house and they managed to crash in to the gas pump close to the boathouse?? How odd?? 

They get to shore with the bleeding Malik.  Again, another huge fuck up. How many other sharks were in that area?? How about the one that took Malik’s arm??   That shark would have been on their asses, but it was gone, maybe eating Maya. Finally they get Malik inside and as odd as it is.  Red and Dennis arrive to help them out. Beth and Gordon go with them and on their adventure they find out that Red and Dennis are a couple of evil bastards. Of course they mentioned the hurricane gate and the other ominous version that they had put the sharks there.  Which the sharks didn’t show up, because Dennis and Red had some sort of shark repellant.  Nice!!

Malik finds out that Maya was gone and decides to go find it and kill it in the name of love/revenge/the dead girlfriend.  But what we find out that the shark Malik kills is in fact a Hammer Head, the wrong shark and it has a video camera attached to its belly. So now the assumption is that there is more sharks in the water.  I mean, the water is so murky that we can’t tell if that shark was a Mako, Bull shark, Great White, Thrasher, or a Tiger to name a few in the great blue salt water ocean. Back on the boat, Dennis and Red force Gordon in to the water and naturally he swims away and is able to climb some sort of tree cluster.  And a shark leaps out of the water and plucks him right there.  I thought that was pretty sweet….even though you still have no idea what shark ate him.

Of course the ominous answer of they putting them there seemed a bit strange when they had for the first time seen Cookie Cutter sharks and feed Beth to them.  Yeah, we know she is died.  Granted Blake is too stupid because he puts a now more injured and bleeding Malik on a jet ski to get him to a hospital.  Malik sees a shark and sacrifices himself to save Blake.  But the typical cliché of the friend not listening turns around to save them when another or maybe the same shark chases Blake.  As Blake is trying to get away from the shark another shark leaps in front of him and takes him off the jetski.  Which mysteriously doesn’t crash and burn in to a tree.

Back at the house, Sara and Nick meet up with Sheriff Sabin.  He sees the huge Hammer Head on shore and goes and talks with the remaining two survivors. Yet again, with all these sharks in the water, why hasn’t Sheriff Sabin been attacked or have been attacked?? PLOT HOLE!! I mean at least mention that you keep some sort of device because you was afraid with the hurricane flood gates open that a shark could come in and you wanted to be safe from harm.  Of course the kind sheriff gives Nick and Sara some soup, but Sara doesn’t eat it to find out Nick is passed out and so is her dog. 

When the climatic “Ooh spooky” your friend/bad history guy friend~Dennis shows up to save Sheriff Sabin’s ass.   You know what’s next.  Sara has been taken to be taught some sort of grudge lesson by Dennis and Sheriff Sabin is having his fun with Nick.  We find out that Sheriff Sabin has a huge mouth.  He tells Nick their evil plot, but we also find out he has a weakness for old rock music.  Nick uses that angle and gets out.  The only shark so far that I was able to know with out any help was the Hammer Head.  Sheriff Sabin explains that the shark he was going to be fed to was a Tiger Shark.

Still the water was to murky to even fucking tell.  Granted the cliché of the boy gets out and the bad guy gets killed/eaten so he can run off to save the woman of his dreams from the jaws of death.

Dennis reveals he is still bitter towards Sara and how things ended.  Of course naturally Sara uses her womanly ways Sara is placed in a shark cage to be fed by hungry sharks that they manage to keep in cages.  Cages?? Seriously??  How is it that aquariums don’t do that??  Sharks on display in cages!! Nick comes to save the day and a shark kills Dennis with the help of Sara.  Of course being a shark, it comes back to kill Sara.  Sara’s dog brings Nick the boom-stick and he uses to blow up the shark.  They all get out of the water and it looks a happy ending till the great white leaps out of the water towards them. 

Production notes:

Shark Night 3D is suppose to be a 3D horror film written by Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg. Principal photography took place in the fall of 2010 in Louisiana around the Ark-La-Tex and Caddo Lake in Texas.  Naturally Shark Night 3D received very negative reviews from critics.  It had a PG-13 rating so it produced lack luster gore.

My overall opinion:

I will say the leaping shark moves was pretty impressive. Since sharks do those impressive moves out in the wild.  The guy Dennis who has deep sea dived with sharks would know that there is over 440 species of them.  Granted the Bull and River sharks can live both in salt and fresh water, which makes them diverse than the other sharks.  The Great White, Tiger, Blue, Mako, and Hammerhead are at the top of the sea kingdom. Sharks have excellent senses and even though some have great vision at night, but not all.  There was so many fuck ups in this movie.  How many sharks were in this lake??  How was it that they could hold captive sharks?? How did they get them into cages and under that storage unit with the Tiger shark??  Seriously, it was great campy fun with impressive flying shark action.  But don’t you think that the first shark would have leapt out of the water to get Malik?? How about that massive Great White??  How is it that it leaps twice??  A massive shark that big would be needing to consume more than Blake.  Sharks don’t stay to one area, why was it not near the town??  Why didn’t anybody start an investigation with all those uppity college/university students that Dennis, Red and Sheriff Sabin were feeding them??  Nobody leaves it to local authorities if there are enough reports.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand the nature of sharks. They are truly at the top of the underwater food chain and yet 3-humans are able to control them.  I find that incredibly fishy. Even if you have some sort of electric sound wave device to protect you from them, but shit always malfunctions.  Seriously they would have been eaten.  I understand the typical cliché shit were all over this movie:

• No cell phone reception
• No landline
• No radio
• No body listens
• Friends blame each other
• Friends going to a {{So-called}} secluded lake for a weekend trip
• Some one has beef with a local
• Spurn-psycho lovers
• Friends having fun on the lake and one has an accident and the list goes on

Okay, let’s actually talk about that shit.  If your friend is in the water and is screaming at you to get you out of the water, are you seriously going to laugh and poke fun at them??  NO!! If your friend is a bit far away from the boat and gets sucked in.  Well more than likely the chances of a propeller slicing his arm up is not likely.  Your friend would have been hurt and more likely be dead.  I think it is funny to see the typical person in the water having a great time and you already know that person is going to die or have something bad happen to them. 

If you like another badly made shark movie, then this is a must.  I understand with the move to 3D that the impressive moves of leaping and flinging shit, but seriously how about making a movie.  Jaws didn’t have all the special effects and leaping moves, but still that would scare the hell out of me…a giant Great White flying out of the air to get you in your tiny boat.  I think people would actually be more afraid of the ocean then they are now.  It’s a myth that sharks have great sense of smell but they have the same leaping capabilities as a Killer Whale, whales and dolphins.

Yeah adding a bunch of flesh eating sharks in one area was different, but the sharks would have made their presence known much sooner than later in different areas.  Sharks are unpredictable.  The movie itself was pretty much predictable, except for the Blake getting snatched off the Jet Ski.  That had me at awe.  I am naturally a pretty demented person, so when Gordon got to the trees, I was hoping for a shark to snatch him.  At the end of Jaws, I would make jokes that a shark would come out and eat the two.  As Nick, Sara and the dog was safely on the boat.  I was thinking the ending would be a flying shark.  Which it was….

Overall rating:

~Hellz Writer~