Shark Night (Review by Carrie Stribling)
I believe Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star sums up this grossly over-budgeted massacre best: “The sharks are rubber and the performances are wooden and that’s just about all you need to know.”
In retrospect, I should have realized that a PG-13 shark flick would be sub-par, but the myriad of amusing inconsistencies and impossibilities that “Shark Night” provides enough comic relief to actually be worth the popcorn price. The film (referred to herein as “Laugh Riot”) centers around a group of fun-loving college kids spending the weekend at the lake house of the tormented Sara (Sara Paxton). Liquor flows, beer pong ensues, and it’s not long before teams of computer-generated sharks show up uninvited.
I won’t give away too much of the Laugh Riot’s plot (which would fit comfortably on half of a Post-It note), but I’d be disappointing my fans if I didn’t touch on a small sampling of the more ridiculously bad moments:
Flying sharks, professed tattoos that do not exist, gasoline fires that magically snuff themselves out and produce no smoke, a species of shark that normally lives miles beneath the ocean’s surface who can now survive in a brackish-water lake, people who can hold their breath underwater for at least five minutes, a highly territorial species of shark that now hunts in packs with its friends, and the cast gracing us with a truly horrible rap video during the credits.
All of the above taken into consideration, the horrifically glaring parts of “Shark Night” are the blatant medically-impossible scenarios. The most phenomenal of these is Malik (Sinqua Walls), a character with the unique ability to survive for days after having had his arm bitten off by one of the sharks. Malik receives no medical attention other than a tourniquet, but still has enough swagger to stumble back into the lake hours later and slay a hammerhead shark with a spear.
All that separates “Shark Night” from the campy deliciousness of a B movie is the actors themselves. They chose to portray their characters as multi-faceted and dramatic, and fail miserably at both. The Laugh Riot’s own tag line is, “Terror runs deep.” Catchy, but irrelevant — considering the setting is a lake. Good for a chuckle and a groan, but I’d only buy the DVD to use as a coaster.
