Rent Shark Night (2011)

Shark Night review by Melissa Orcine - Cinema Paradiso

A bunch of college kids retreat to a saltwater lakeside home for unabashed bikini swimming and a whole lot of boisterous roughhousing. But there’s something in the water -- sharks – and their food of choice, human flesh.

Ridiculous as it may sound, that’s exactly what ‘Shark Night’ is going for. Sharks in a lake? Wow, that’s just like ‘Snakes On A Plane’! Coincidentally, both movies are directed by the same person, David R. Ellis, an expert on silly-plotted movies and making victims out of humans thanks to staple creepy creatures. Ellis is back in his favorite form but it looks like without a budget. Not only does it show lesser girls in bikinis (a standard for every slasher), it also shows little of how the sharks maul its unsuspecting victims to death. Cloudy blood in the water is it? Is this Ellis’ version of ‘Jaws’?

‘Shark Night’ would seem like the shark attacks happen, well, at night and yet, most of it are actually shown during the day. There are 3D scenes but what for, they don’t exactly have bite on its regular rendering, its 3D would not be any different. Nothing to see here, move along, keep on swimming. Sara Paxton, who is now in her third flick with her immersed in water; see ‘Aquamarine’ and ‘The Last House On The Left’, can’t act hottie-cute in this and save it from dullness. You may want to blame the body count on her, though. She does invite her classmates to the saltwater lake with sharks.

For exploitation slasher flicks involving demonized versions of animals (top favorites are snakes and sharks), this film doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself. Already outrageous in premise, there isn’t any effort to make it more absurd than it should be. A good bad movie should be able to be so bad, then terrible, and it turns right around to good again. However this is just bad from beginning to end and it’s a travesty since it seems the title would suggest they’re being ambitious.