With production of the putative rampaging Megalodon movie Meg once again cancelled, shark havoc fans must again content themselves with DTV fare. Luckily (sorta), German TV has ridden to the rescue, with the latest in a line of eminently lame Megalodon movies. (Actually, I thought Megalodon had some pretty good moments, and I’d actually give it a thumb’s up, but that’s grading on a scale. Shark Hunter-lame. Shark Attack 3—occasionally laughable, but not with enough consistency.)
I used to watch all of these Sci-Fi Channel-esque killer animal films, and even was reviewing them all, when Scott Foy saved my life by popping up and taking that burden upon himself, like an Atlas of Crap. I have to admit, I apparently don’t have the stones for it anymore. Honestly compels me to admit that, once I ascertained that German TV monster movies are as unlikely to offer up an original idea or character as American TV monster movies, my fast forward button was utilized with enthusiasm.
There’s a guy who lives on a gorgeous Spanish island. He’s sad because (only he thinks) a shark ate his wife. He doesn’t want her teenage daughter in the water, but she’s rebelling. A woman scientist comes to town, working for a Huge Corporation doing cancer research. (If that doesn’t set off the warning bells, you haven’t seen many Giant Killer Shark movies, especially Deep Blue Sea.) She and Sad Guy fall in love. I mean, not until the end of the movie, but you knew it was going to happen, so why wait? Blah blah blah.
Production values are fine. The location is beautiful, the acting decent (even with the obvious overemphatic dubbing into English), the script…did I mention the location was beautiful. Meanwhile, I was a little confused as to whether this would be a Big Shark movie or a Giant Shark movie. The description mention a 35-foot shark (Big) but the box art features an obviously Giant one. In fact, it is a Megalodon movie, so there’s that.
So let’s cut to the chase. How is the shark action? Meh. It’s OK. The opening features divers in a shark cage surrounded by a big pod of ravenous great whites. (They being trapped down there due to a guy who’s retarded even for this genre). It’s not a great scene, but it’s different, and OK. There aren’t enough attack scenes—although, yes, two kids making out in a boat get whacked—and the film is bloodless even for TV.
As for the giant shark, it has a fair amount of screentime, but in a largely, frustratingly elliptical manner. None of the Megalodon movies yet have understood that you need the shark to be consistently scaled against something to get a sense of how big it is. Only in one scene here do they really do the Person-Eaten-By-Giant-Shark imagery we crave. See that cover art above? That’s the sort of shot we want to see a lot of, and of which we get almost none of. Seeing the shark swim around in water doesn’t exactly play up with the GIANTNESS of it, and isn’t that why you make, well, a giant shark movie in particular?
Watching this was enough to make me mourn for that Meg movie (even though it probably would have been pretty bad itself), which presumably would have had the resources to actually play like a giant monster film. We need to see the shark attacking and sinking boats and knocking piers down and other giant monster stuff. Advise for the makers of the next Megalodon movie: Watch It Came From Beneath the Sea to get an idea of what you’re supposed to be doing here.
Anyway, if you’re a shark movie fanatic, well, you’ve seen worse, and far worse at that. This one’s OK for a quick, harmless watch. Really, though, sooner or later somebody’s really going to have to do this right.
Pardon me for not getting more detailed here, like about the scene where the hero gets everyone out of the water, just like Brody does in Jaws. Eh, I could get a bit more detailed, but I just couldn’t raise the energy.
By the way, another genre that hasn’t spawned very many good movies? Killer crocs and alligators. Sadly, the failure of the not very good Primeval screwed up the chance of the potentially far better Rogue was getting an American release. The poster is cool, though (except for a hideously bad tagline), if Jaws-influenced. Still, I’d pay money to see that movie, and hopefully someday I’ll get a chance.
