Review: Shark Night 3D

Short version: ...

Longer version: I am still in shock from the experience of seeing "Shark Night 3D." I have never seen a movie THIS bad before in my life and I love bad movies. I am someone who, at least half the time, had seen the movie MST3K was mocking prior to the episode. This was not a movie so much as 3 different thirds of three different movies someone found laying around a studio and decided to make them into a movie.

While I don't believe in "Spoilers," in this case they are actually "Friendly Warning Signs" to keep you from making the mistake I made.

First Third: This is the set up for an 80's Slasher movie ALA Friday the 13th. Our heroes (who will be known as "Shark Food" for the rest of this review) meet up at college to go for a long weekend in the small town where one of the group went for summers as a kid, but a tragedy has kept her from going there for 3 years.

Our first introduction to this small town (after a five minute high speed montage of every single road the shark food took to get there from their college campus) is with a pick up truck pulling next to our lone Black character and his Hispanic girlfriend. Naturally this truck contains racist locals and naturally a history with our "summers as a kid" shark food emerges and blocks a confrontation. Nothing like pointless land-based drama in a shark movie.

30 minutes in and only one pre-credit shark attack so far for those keeping score at home.

Our shark food arrives at the house on an island and the slasher film ends with our "summers as a kid" shark food telling the appetizers that their cell phones won't work; creating the perfect setting for a slasher like Jason, but this is a shark movie.

Helpful Hint: If you want to make a horror movie not based in the 80's, you have to set it someplace where cell phones don't work.

Second Third: This is what one expects from the FIRST ACT of a shark movie; skiing, girls with tight bodies in bikinis, a dog playing fetch in the water, poorly done CGI fins following people ominously and point of view shots from underwater. All it was missing was the "duh-nuh" music from Jaws...and the suspense...and the plot.

Normally, too much explanation in a horror movie distracts from the actual story, but in this case it would be nice to know why one of every species of shark is in this river/lake and why they are attacking humans so fiercely. Hammerheads, Great Whites, and Nurses are not that common. The "Katrina put them here" story didn't work for me in the slightest.

Now then, one goes to a shark movie for the kills, right? Someone should have told the director this little factoid. Maybe I got spoiled by the prolonged and graphic kills of Piranha, but this movie's kills consisted of shark food on jet ski; shark jumps from water; jet ski left alone; the end. If the CGI shark looked less like something I fought in the Atari 2600's Jaws game, I might have been happy with the kills. Sharks jumping out of water is pretty cool to watch as Shark Week proves, but come on. More than half the time the camera wasn't even aimed at the kill. Considering the sharks were placed in the shots with computers, there is no excuse for the camera missing the vital and cool parts we all went to see.

Third Third: STRONG SPOILERS AHEAD

The third act is where this shark movie (pardon the pun) jumped the shark. Our local racists from the first act return and the movie turns once again; this time into a "revenge thriller" as our locals are behind the attacks all along. Seems three years ago "summers as a kid" shark food and racist local were an item until she accidentally sliced his face open with a propeller while they were diving together. Now he isn't cute anymore and wants revenge and is using the sharks to kill her friends.

While that would be a decent story, it is not the real reason for the events of this movie, just a side-motivation. The real reason is even dumber...remeber I spoke of "Shark Week" before? See, our racist locals attach cameras to the sharks (how is never explained) and film the attacks to sell online because "Shark Week is the most watched cable event and some people will pay to see the real thing." Even the sheriff is involved.

How did they know "summers as a kid" shark food would return out of the blue? How did they get the sharks? How did they attach the cameras to the sharks? How did they get the sharks to attack on command? Unimportant questions only a lucid audience would ask and the makers of this movie clearly intended to lull the audience into a coma of accepting any nonsense they threw on the screen.

I cannot stress how bad this movie was, and not in a "let's go see how bad this movie is" way. Stay far away from this horrible disaster of a movie.

To give you an idea of just how bad it is: I got in with a free pass and wanted my money back.