(Long Island, N.Y.) I wanted to watch Apollo 18 for you this week, which looked like a pretty good horror/sci-fi movie. Alas, due to a scheduling snafu, I was instead forced to endure a lovely little source of pain called Shark Night 3D. Yes, Shark Night 3D. I’m telling you, no good can come of a film with that title. None at all. I’d seen the trailer…seen it, and written it off as an insipid advertisement for yet another lame by-the-numbers horror movie about stupid teens played by stupid 30-something year-olds getting eaten by stupid CG sharks. And yeah, in reality, having sat through this piece of garbage, that’s exactly what I got. No more, no less.
Now, as a fan of horror movies – REAL horror movies, not slick, focus-tested, watered-down swill like this – I was at least hoping for some good, old fashioned gore to pass the time. I mean, it’s a movie about sharks eating people…it’s bound to at least have a few good, messy kills to satisfy my inner maniac, right? Guess again; Shark Night 3D is rated PG-13. Now, I’ve seen some good, gore-free PG-13 horror movies (the recent James Wan-directed flick Insidious comes to mind), but this is a movie about SHARKS EATING PEOPLE. It’s not a gripping drama like Jaws, it’s a cruddy, low-budget horror film churned out like clockwork for mass consumption. It’s supposed to be gory!
Don’t get me wrong…Shark Night 3D does have its share of toned-down carnage, but in the end, a PG-13 version of this movie only hurts it. After all, it’s called Shark Night 3D…people expect it to be two things: A) bad, and B) bloody. Instead, it’s just bad, and not in a good way.
The plot follows the typical Friday the 13th mold we’re all so familiar with: college friends from Tulane University who spend a weekend at a house near Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. Cue drinking and partying, which is soon cut short by the appearance of SHARKS in the lake. Yes, it turns out that a shadowy, mysterious figure has unleashed an army of sharks into the lake for kicks and, of course, the kids start dying one-by-one, leading up to the big confrontation at the end with the evil, unknown baddie!
Sounds like an art film, I know, but it’s really not. I swear!
Shark Night 3D is not a good movie. It’s not written well, it’s not acted well. The cast is mostly nobodies, with the exception of perhaps former American Idol contestant Katharine McPhee. Wait, what am I saying? The cast is ALL nobodies, that’s what. Nobodies that can barely act, in a movie scripted by a writer that can barely write and a director that can barely direct. It’s just disgusting.
Obviously made to cash in on the success of the recent horror/comedy Piranha 3D, but without the humor, fast pacing, and hard R-rating that made that movie successful, Shark Night 3D is a boring, instantly forgettable waste of time that I’d can’t advise you against seeing enough.
It’s actually depressing…if you look through my recent movie reviews, you’ll see that I had a nice run of solid-to-good films to write about lately. I was feeling lucky, honestly, that I hadn’t hit a huge speed bump of sorts in a while. But things have been slowly getting worse lately, and I am finding myself handing out my first one-star review since Kevin James’ truly awful Zookeeper (which really wasn’t that long ago). Actually, now that Zookeeper comes to mind, Shark Night 3D doesn’t seem so bad in comparison. Of course, that’s like saying that the guy that robbed and set fire to your house isn’t as bad as, say, Hitler. It’s small comfort.
Shark Night 3D = bad. Avoid. Thanks. Good night!
