Theatrically Shark Night had the added gimmick of being in 3D but I can’t help but think that it didn’t help much. This might’ve been a good idea in the 80s when boobs and gore could’ve bolstered it, but PG-13 neuters the fun.
Some college kids, Nick (Dustin Milligan), Beth (Katharine McPhee), Malik (Sinqua Walls), Maya (Alyssa Diaz), Blake (Chris Zylka) and Gordon (Joel David Moore), are going to an isolated island getaway owned by Sara’s (Sara Paxton) family.
Along the way they encounter the scarred Dennis (Chris Carmack) and his hillbilly friend Red (Joshua Leonard) who threatens the others until Sara smoothes things over. They are told to have a good time by Sheriff Sabin (Donal Logue) and settle in to party the weekend away. That is until one of their pals looses a limb to a shark and then things get bloody, or as bloody as PG-13 can get.
I have to wonder that the idea behind Shark Night would’ve made a killer flick in the mid-80s. Sure they wouldn’t have CGI to make the fishes swim, but they’d still look better than the obviously computer generated predators. At least they’d be in the real world and the actors would have something besides a ball on a stick to react to.
However, they would have bloody gore kills and we certainly would get to see some topless babes. We guys could probably forgive a lot with those changes. What we get is a PG-13 watered down bit of silliness. The actors are all model perfect and Joel David Moore seems to be on the eight year college plan.
The scenery is nice, but you usually don’t focus on that sort of thing in a horror movie. Even the guy with the life changing scar is pretty buff. The idea is so ludicrous, but I suppose feasible if those bodies of water are saline.
Nothing ever really gels, but maybe it was because I never really got caught up in the supposed fun and started picking the thing apart. I’d say it lacks bite, but I guess some other critic beat me to that punch. The Piranha remake was brainless, but it was at least brainless R-rated fun.
Shark Night is dead in the water, which I think somebody else also said.
Shark Night is presented in widescreen (1.85:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include the “Shark Attack! Kill Machine!” that gathers all the anemic kills into one long clip show (about 6 minutes, and easier to watch than the actual feature), the 4 minute “Ellis’ Island” making of, the 2 minute theatrical trailer, and sneak peeks at other Fox products.
Sharks are sometimes called sea dogs and Shark Night is certainly a dog. If you watched it theatrically you may have been kept awake by the 3D, but with that lacking on the one I watched I wanted to doze off. It could’ve been goofy fun, but its rating subservience drowned the whole thing.
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