Review: Super Shark / Cert: 15 / Director: Fred Olen Ray / Screenplay: Fred Olen Ray, Clyde McCoy, Antonio Olivas / Starring: John Schneider, Sarah Lieving, Tim Abell, Jimmie Walker / Release Date: January 13th
Fed up of those horrendous made-for-TV shark movies yet? If you’re on the cusp then Super Shark may just be the final nail in that particular coffin. This time out, we’ve got a giant shark that can walk on land and can fly. Safe to say, Synthetic Filmwerx decided to steer clear of the grounded-in-reality approach here.
After an offshore drilling accident seemingly releases this super-sized shark, we get to see the beast ravage its way through a stream of throwaway characters that you really don’t care about in the slightest. Even more odd, characters that are given 20 minutes or so of loose ‘character development’ are offed willy-nilly, meaning that you’re left with a bunch of characters that you’ve barely seen in the movie going up against the shark for a climactic beach-front battle.
We Starburst folks love us a good shark movie or even a good ‘bad shark movie’, but Super Shark fails to tick even the ‘so bad it’s entertaining’ box. As expected, the budget for Super Shark is minuscule, meaning special effects shots are cheap and nasty. Rather than keeping the SFX stuff at a minimum and steering clear of this weakness, Super Shark regularly throws horrible SFX shot after horrible SFX shot at the viewer. It also doesn’t help that the movie regurgitates the exact same shot at least eight or nine times during the film’s running time. And a note to the filmmakers: using the same shot but flipping it backwards does not make it an entirely new shot!
On top of this tide of turd, we get a final battle that looks like somebody has placed a child’s toys on a beach and then slapped a horrific, repetitive animation of a snarling, growling shark over the footage. And while we’re at it, why is it that every single shark in this type of movie has to channel their inner Aslan these days?
Super Shark isn’t helped one iota by the virtually non-existent ‘performances’ of its cast. Despite John Schneider (Smallville’s Jonathan Kent) doing his best to hold things together, the dross dished up by the rest of the cast makes you almost yearn for Tara Reid in Sharknado. Almost. Certain scenes are so bad that they’re reminiscent of an ’80s porn film. You’re literally waiting for somebody to walk in to ‘repair the fridge.’ And the beach? It’s so cold and windy, it may as well have been filmed in Aberystwyth.
Super Shark’s only plus points? A pimp-tastic opening theme tune that’s more superfly that ‘super shark,’ and some fantastically bad one liners – “Tan-lines are for quitters” and “Put another shark on the barbie” spring to mind.
Extras: Blooper Reel / Trailer / Music Video
