Twenty 20-Sharks is a chronological survey of shark attack movies. In this entry we’re officially returning to schlock territory with the trashtastic Shark Night.
As our survey of shark attack movies trudges onward, the whole phenomenon will soon fall into the realm of made-for-TV SyFy Channel trash. And even further down the line, it’ll degenerate into a vast ocean of chummy backwash made exclusively for Tubi1. I’d personally like to avoid all of that if at all possible, but for now we’re hanging out in 2011, where they’re still cranking these things out for mass audiences. Case in point: David R. Ellis’ 2011 sharksploitation thriller Shark Night.
And as you can tell from the header image, the full official title is Shark Night 3D. The film was produced in the immediate wake of James Cameron’s Avatar, when just about every summer movie2 worth its salt in that era was either shot for 3D or, at the very least, hastily post-converted to 3D to squeeze a couple extra dollars out of beleaguered moviegoers. (Fun Fact: This was apparently the first 3D shark movie since Jaws 3D. It wouldn’t be the last.)
Shark Night is also the first film in this series I actually reviewed professionally upon release. You can read that piece here if you want. Looking back on it now, it really suffers from that young writer’s disease of confusing run-on sentences with comedy. As for the movie, it suffered from a quick, dirty 3D gimmick slapped onto an otherwise pretty lame slasher movie. My assessment of it hasn’t really changed; it’s still a turd. However, having now sat through a whole bunch of garbage shark movies, I can at least admit they polished this turd up real nice.
The 3D gimmick comes courtesy of director David R. Ellis, then still riding the viral coattails of his 2006 cinematic meme Snakes on a Plane. While the movie was always intended to be released internationally as Shark Night 3D, Ellis wanted the movie’s US title to be Untitled Shark Thriller 3D. He didn’t simply believe in the gimmick; he desperately wanted another viral hit. That hit would never come. Shark Night ultimately made $41 million on a $25 million budget, which isn’t terrible, but it’s no hit. Ellis also passed away in 2013, so this would be his final feature3.
Shark Night finds seven college buddies from Tulane University packing up for a fun-filled weekend in the Louisiana bayou. Rich girl Sara (Sara Paxton) invites everyone up to her parents’ lake house, so far out in the country that no cell phone can get a signal. In short order, we meet our cast of shark bait: Football star Malik (Sinqua Walls), who’s planning to propose to his girl Maya (Alyssa Diaz); male model Blake (Chris Zylka) and gamer horndog Gordon (Joel David Moore4); Sara’s friend Beth (Katherine McPhee) and pre-med student Nick (the Hot Frosty himself, Dustin Milligan).
They arrive at Sara’s house by boat, leading the local sheriff (Donal Logue) on a high speed pursuit that turns out to be just for shits and giggles. Not much else to do policing the gators and mangroves out in the sticks, I guess. We also meet a pair of local yokels, Dennis (Chris Carmack) and Red (Blair Witch Project‘s Joshua Leonard), and we’re told in no uncertain terms that all these people have history with Sara. Dennis especially, as we later learn that Sara’s the one who left this pretty boy with a scar across his face after running him over with a motorboat. And if you need any more clues that these guys may not be on the up-and-up, just know that Red has filed his teeth down to sharp points.
Anyway, let’s get to the shark attacks. Malik gets attacked while wakeboarding, quickly losing his right arm. When they get him back to shore, everyone stands around dumbfounded, with no clue what to do. That’s when everyone shouts at Nick that he’s basically a doctor, and he snaps into action, applying a tourniquet and fishing Malik’s severed arm out of the water. That’s when the reality hits them: Holy shit, there’s a shark in this lake. Nick quickly points out that it’s a saltwater lake, so sure, it could happen, I guess.
And now that everyone knows there’s a shark in the water, they all agree to simply stay in the house and wait for help to arrive, right? WRONG!
Without a phone signal—or, I dunno, a CB radio or the internet or anything useful in the absence of cell service—these dummies decide the only course of action is to load up Malik on the boat and speed him to the nearest hospital. Normally, this would be a smart, levelheaded course of action. Problem is, the sharks in this movie (and there are multiple sharks) are both incredibly smart and incredibly fast. A shark chases after the boat, knocking Maya into the water never to be seen again, causing them to turn around back to the house, crashing the boat in a hilarious explosion at the dock.
And now that the boat is wrecked, everyone’s gonna stay in the house and wait for help to arrive, right? WRONG AGAIN!
Because now that everyone’s on the same page, logically speaking, we need some excuse to get everyone back on the water. Enter Dennis and Red, who show up to ‘investigate’ the exploding boat, but instead take Gordon and Beth hostage. Seems our local boys are up to no good, and when it’s revealed that the sheriff is in on it too, he drops a behemoth of an infodump on poor, tortured Nick:
These hillbillies reckon that since everyone loves to watch Shark Week every year, they might as well fit some sharks with mounted cameras, toss them into the lake, and sell footage of the sharks eating their hapless victims to the highest bidders. Sheriff Donal Logue explains that while everyone loves Shark Week, the true sickos out there would pay good money to watch people get annihilated by bloodthirsty sharks. And to prove it, he ties Nick to a chair and dunks him into shark infested waters just to be a dick.
There are moments in Shark Night that are genuinely pretty fun. Any time the movie remembers its supposed to have some shark-based mayhem? The movie comes to giddy, stupid life. The sharks are pretty lousy CG creations, given the budget, but the kills are at least kind of creative. On two separate occasions, sharks leap out of the water to take down their prey, and both instances made me cackle like a hyena. Gordon gets shot in the chest and knocked out of Dennis’ boat, somehow survives, and does the only intelligent thing anyone in this movie does by swimming for and climbing the nearest tree. Of course, the sharks in this movie don’t care about trees, and he gets chomped right down from there with the quickness.
For the most part, though, it’s just an exercise in exploitation. Ellis simply cannot resist the urge to begin multiple scenes by zooming out from a girl’s butt. Whether it’s an underwater shot of a bikini, or some innocent college student simply walking to class, this movie just really loves butts. I’m not complaining about butts, though it really sets the tone for the rest of the movie. If MTV Spring Break were a horror movie, it would be Shark Night. Just endless shots of blatant, unsubtle leering at scantily clad starlets. Which, y’know, there’s nothing really wrong with that, but when the movie does this for fun, and then turns around and makes it disgusting when the bad guys start leering at Sara and Beth? It sends some pretty mixed signals.
It’s like David Ellis thinks all of this is a joke. Which is not the same as playing it off as a joke. One requires a level of self-awareness that I just don’t think Ellis ever possessed. I wish the movie’s tongue had been more firmly in-cheek. Shark Night could’ve used a few more gags, a few more goofs, a few more winks to the audience. It could’ve been more like Alexandre Aja’s remake of Piranha, released the previous year. That movie—which, now that I think about it, is pretty Twenty 20-Sharks adjacent—leaned into the gore and the campier elements because it already knew what a silly endeavor the whole thing was. It feels like David Ellis wanted to make a legitimate shark movie, but then pivoted midway through and stopped taking the job seriously.
There’s a post-credits music video that really underlines everything I’m talking about here. It’s a rap video performed by the cast, apparently shot during various stages of production. So this wasn’t some silly goof tossed off at the end of the shoot. This video was something they’d worked on from the start. It’s everything the movie is about: It’s short, irritating, refuses to take itself seriously, and just plain feels like money and effort wasted.
FINAL RATING:
2 stars (out of 5). S’pretty lame. $25 million couldn’t save this turd.
NEXT TIME: Bait (2012).
- The People’s Streaming Service.
↩︎ - Shark Night was released Labor Day weekend, so I’m choosing to count it as The Last Summer Movie of 2011.
↩︎ - In a filmography that also saw Homeward Bound II, Final Destination 2 and 4, and Snakes on a Plane.
↩︎ - Speaking of Avatar, Moore has been in all three of ’em, so far. And according to Letterboxd, is slated to appear in the next two. ↩︎
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