We’re back!

The film choices are limited to Prime and Tubi, because I’ve cut back on streaming services, but rest assured, there’s still a lot of rubbish to come. Yes, I’m returning to shark movies, because there are still around 17,000 I haven’t watched yet.

The Reef: Stalked (2022) – Prime

Much confusion surrounding this one. First of all, I thought this was a follow-up to the Blake Lively film, but that one was The Shallows. Then I felt like I recognized certain scenes and panicked thinking I’d seen it before. When I looked at my Letterboxd diary, it said I watched it last week and gave it 3.5 stars, but no review.

But I didn’t watch it last week.

Perhaps they are all blending together.

Anyhoo, Nic and her sister, Cath, go on diving trips with their best friends, Lisa and Jodie. After one such trip, Cath is brutally murdered by her abusive partner, and Nic runs away for 9 months, unable to face the trauma, and leaving her other sister, Annie, to pick up the pieces.

When Nic finally returns, it is to meet up with her remaining pals, plus Annie who is trying to fill in for Cath, on a diving trip. Unfortunately, Nic’s PTSD prevents her from breaking the surface of the water, and to compound matters, the women find themselves stuck on a remote island with a hungry great white doing everything to stop them reaching the mainland.

It’s a similar plot to many of the other films I’ve watched, but this one is served greatly by excellent performances from the leads, particularly Teressa Liane and Saskia Archer as the remaining sisters who need to do some serious patching up. Director Andrew Traucki does an excellent job of ramping up the tension with endless shots of ominous ocean waves, dropping out the sound to make the wait for each attack unbearable, and the shark footage was all real aside from one dodgy CG shadow.

A decent effort, despite a very low body count.

7/10

Sharks of the Corn (2021) – Prime

Well, we did it folks. We finally found a film that broke me.

I had every intention of watching twenty new shark flicks, but I’m capping this project at ten because I’ve lost the will to live.

In an effort to avoid any Polonia Brothers films I thought I’d try one directed by Tim Ritter. Little did I know what I was getting into.

The film was also written by Ritter and, terrible dialogue aside, it’s actually a fun idea, albeit as daft as a goose on a scooter.

A serial killer called Teddy dons a balaclava and ‘shark tooth’ mask to murder countless folks using a bleached set of shark jaws. This is all in order to appease the shark goddess that will rise from a Kansas cornfield via electronic signals from Stonehenge and turn all of her devotees into hybrid man-sharks thus ensuring them dominion over the Earth. In the meantime, there are dozens of sharks patrolling the corn rows, killing off anyone foolish enough to take their top off and gambol among the stalks.

Just How Bad Is It? #2: The acting in this is almost uniformly shit, aside from Casey Miracle as the CIA agent, and Steve Guynn as Teddy the killer. Guynn really commits to the role and is actually fun to watch. The direction is dire and uninspired, the editing is piss-poor, the effects are laughably bad, and the whole shebang is a depressing experience.

I watched this over four nights because I kept nodding off, and whenever I woke up there always seemed to be 70 mins left, which left me hollowed out and feeling helpless.

Recommended.

1/10

Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012) – Prime

As a penance for sitting through Sharks of the Corn, I put this one on knowing full well that my hatred for scripted reality shows and vacuous celebrities, combined with CG sharks, would be a combination previously thought confined to Dante’s oft-rumoured Tenth Circle.

In this pastiche of the televisual event of the current century, the fun-loving scamps of Jersey Shore (in this case, The Complication, Paulie Balzac, Donnie, Nooki, J-Moni, and BJ) not only have to contend with sweater-draped chads, but also ravenous, albino, bull sharks. All this on the eve of a solo Joey Fatone concert at the end of the pier.

I suspect viewer mileage may vary; if you loved the original show, then you’ll get a kick out of the spoofing, if you hated with every fiber of your being the two minutes you accidentally watched one night, then this ain’t changing your mind.

Technically, the film is competently shot, and the acting is perfectly fine. Lots of old talent on display, including William Atherton, Paul Sorvino, and Jack Scalia. Jeremy Luke (The Complication) was surprisingly earnest and did a great job with a sub-par script.

The effects are not life-changing, but serviceable, and the whole thing licks along at a brisk pace, so it’s got that going for it.

Recommended for fans of rubbish TV and thick accents.

5/10

Ninja vs Shark (2023) – Prime

Here’s a title that gave me a glimmer of hope for at least something a bit fun, and it very nearly was.

Kôichi Sakamoto’s film takes place in the Edo period. A small fishing village is being terrorized by an evil cult leader who uses dark magic to control sharks (and turn himself into one when needs be). This cultist, Koushirou, wants all the pearls the village has dived for, as they fuel his dark powers, and thrown into this mix is Sayo, a young pearl-diver, who is an outcast in her own village after killing the man who killed her mother.

The man’s brother is the village mayor, and he has decreed that Sayo is cursed, and the current misfortunes are her fault. The mayor recruits a wandering ninja to help protect the village and defeat the shark, and this ninja, Kotaro, has his own demons to deal with, along with helping Sayo clear her name.

So far, so good. A slightly convoluted but potentially enjoyable tale, one might think, and yes, there’s plenty of fighting, limbs a-flyin’, heads a-poppin’, and CG blood a-gushin’, and a shark does indeed show it’s pixelated noggin around 40 minutes in, but there’s a flaw to this flick.

The misogynistic undertones of the story are hard to swallow. The ninja, supposedly the hero of the show, is introduced to us having just raped the wife of a merchant as ‘payment’ for a previous job. Later, he then threatens to rape Sayo. Not the best way to get us to root for him. The first rape victim is then murdered by a second, crazed, ninja, then resurrected and used as a ghoulish messenger, before being messily dispatched.

As I said, all rather grotesque, and enough to leave a sour taste in the mouth. I found it confounding and infuriating, and spoiled what might have been a fun romp.

5/10

Mega Shark vs Kolossus (2015) – Tubi

Yeah, I’m done with the shark movies — so this list is capped at 10.

Did I finish on a high note?

Did you read the title?

An opening credit montage suggests that the world has been terrorized by megalodons, and united in a Pacific Rim-esque counter-offensive. The sharks are thought to be exterminated, but there’s always one, and it’s being thoroughly horrible to fishing boats and military subs piloted exclusively by busty hotties. While the navy tries to deal with it, a CIA operative in Ukraine has stumbled upon a long-forgotten relic of the cold war; a giant robot powered by something called red mercury. The robot wakes up and goes on a stompy rampage.

Will these two low-polygon titans ever meet? You betcha.

Being an Asylum production, this one is full of the usual nonsense, and staggeringly wide-ranging standards of CG and acting, but it does have Illeana Douglas going for it, and she throws herself into the silliness with the urgency of an actor who needs to remodel their kitchen.

It does exactly what you expect, with the added bonus of a terrible giant robot. No surprises.

5/10

Next up — The Star Warses, followed by 20 alien abduction movies. Gawd help us.

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Just When You Thought It Was Safe, Part 1
Tech Tok
The Weyland-Yutaniverse
Foreign Bodies
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?

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See all of Neil Baker’s Black Gate film reviews here. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits.