Sharks Horror
Darci Carlton
The shortest plot summary possible Alyssa has a haunted shark tooth on her necklace, which transforms her into a partial shark to kill poolside. After each kill contains reoccurring shots, signs of Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills, a stock footage of a beach and more stock of sharks some in aquariums.
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The story for this one is funny and really mixes fantasy and sci-fi elements with sharksploitation. Calling this a horror tale is a bit of a stretch but I will admit that this movie is more entertaining than it should be. This goofy story that felt like it was thought up in a weed smoking session is pretty fun if you just go with it. There is a few scenes that are very uneventful and boring which does bring the movie down but not enough to make it unwatchable.
I have previously written about two quite different types of shark horror: Shark Horror: Naturalistic Horror and Shark Horror: The Shark in the Human World. Part of what is interesting about Under Paris is that it straddles both categories.
[ii] See, for instance, The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War, edited by Timo Vuorisalo, Simo Laakkonen, and Richard P. Tucker (Oregon State University Press, 2017).
This horror film is based on the true story of Australian sailor and shark attack survivor Ray Boundy. When the boat hits a reef and capsizes, Luke and his friends must swim to safety, fending off sharks (and paranoia) on the way.
This new film, produced in association with BuzzFeed Studios, is based on Mexican folklore of the same name. Paul Sturges must protect his family when he investigates an oil rig for his company and encounters a very protective megalodon, an extinct species of giant shark.
The true story of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were accidentally abandoned by their scuba diving group, inspired this horrific survival film. In the film version, the couple battle off the brutal ocean creatures and storms as the crew mounts a massive search.
Lisa and Kate lie about having diving experience to score a cage diving trip while on vacation in Mexico. When the winch holding the cage breaks, they are trapped on the ocean floor with limited oxygen and surrounded by sharks until help arrives.
Jaelyn goes to Vietnam with her husband to get away after a traumatic stillbirth. When their floating bungalow becomes unmoored during a tropical storm, they try to create a smoke signal which incidentally destroys what little shelter they have.
Nancy, a medical student, goes on a surfing trip to Mexico and encounters a dead whale whose carcass draws in sharks. When a shark knocks her off her board and strands her on a small rock 200 yards from shore, she must use her medical training to survive and get back to shore.
Deep Blue Sea was one of the first successful shark movies at the box office since Jaws. In the film, a team of scientists working in an underground facility genetically engineer sharks with larger brains for their Alzheimer's research when the sharks start getting too smart for their own good.
A gunrunner, stranded on a port in the Red Sea, is tricked by a treasure-hunting woman into diving into shark-infested waters. A claim that a stuntman on the film was killed during filming led to a surge in publicity for the film, though it was never confirmed and thought to be a hoax.
Obviously, a shark movie list would be incomplete without Spielberg's classic. In it, a police chief, a marine biologist, and a shark hunter work together to find a shark that has been terrorizing the waters of a resort town.
Sharknado, the ultimate "so-bad-it's-good" horror film, has spawned a cult following as well as five sequels and three spinoffs. The premise is literally a tornado picks up sharks from the ocean and sends them into Los Angeles. As the tagline reads...enough said!
Under Paris (aka, to me at least, Sharknadeau) begins as a standard menacing-creature story. Sophia (Brnice Bejo, Oscar nominee for The Artist) is a scientist studying sharks in the vicinity of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (a real, depressing thing). She and her team get a signal from one of their tagged sharks, named Lilith, and several members of the team go on a dive to obtain a blood sample. This dive does not go well (I mean, I suppose it goes OK for Lilith), leaving Sophia traumatized.
Something In The Water follows a quintet of gal pals who meet up in a tropical paradise for an idyllic wedding celebration. The ladies take a small boat out for an island holiday, but a shark bites one of the women, putting a major damper on the festivities. The fivesome race back to shore but bottom out on a reef, leaving them stranded in the middle of the ocean. Yikes!
Another standout element is the cinematography. The tropical locale is beautifully captured with plenty of grandiose shots of the scenery contained within the first act. The underwater cinematography yields some impressive shots while working to highlight how vulnerable these ladies are. The sight of their limbs dangling like shark snacks serves to warn of horrors to come.
Speaking of the underwater camerawork, there is a scene that sees the ocean tinted red with blood. We witness a shot of the water framed entirely in crimson. That sequence is a visceral display that is artistically rendered. The entire sequence works as a poignant juxtaposition of beauty alongside tragedy.
The picture also makes rather effective use of wide, expansive shots that make the core characters look tiny in comparison to the vast expanse of the ocean. Again, this serves to underscore how isolated, vulnerable, and alone these ladies are.
Cinematography aside, the film also scores points for delivering a few good comedic exchanges. Something in the Water features some quippy banter between the leads. Their dynamic is fairly realistic, making the inevitable fractures in their friendship feel all the more genuine. That piece becomes important when the film loses stamina around the one-hour mark.
Momentary tonal shifts can be effective when the audience is lured into a false sense of security only to have that expectation shattered. But the lull goes on too long here and the return to form never recaptures the momentum of the first two acts. The film would have greatly benefited from at least one more close call to keep the viewer on their toes at the end.
I found it frustrating watching the shark swim by during the narrative downturn, as if doing so solely to remind us a threat is still present. Yet, instead of causing more chaos, the creature proceeds to swim away, not coming into focus again for far too long. Worse yet, the next death following the lull comes by way of a character quietly drowning off-camera. I wish that setup had been staged differently and was instead utilized to keep the tension afloat.
The film eventually ramps the tension level back up for the denouement but it never fully recovers from the melodramatic misstep. If the third act had maintained the pacing more effectively, the film would have been better for it.
The film was shot in 2 locations: a publicpark and the backyard of a suburban home. There is hardly any attention to setdesign, as public washrooms and paved paths make their way into shots that aresupposed to reflect deep woods horror films like THE EVIL DEADor FRIDAY THE 13TH.Kelly admitted after the screening that the film was originally intended to beshot in a cabin in the woods or in a location closer to a beach, but due tounfortunate circumstances had to be moved to a suburban house.
OUIJA SHARK is for fans of horror, low budget movies or for filmmakers. It works on a lot of levels despite ultimately being a joke movie. As a movie-watcher, I left the theatre with sore sides. As a creator, I left the theatre feeling inspired.
Will I read the next book in the series? Yes. Do I hope the next installment is either more fun or stays the course more strongly toward a climax and a resolution? Also yes. As it is, I will leave Snow Shark with 3/5 stars and make sure to keep an eye on the snow for any monster sharks headed my way.
David McGuire lived through the summer of Jaws in 1975 and saw the impact. As a surfer in Southern California, the upside was fewer people in the water. But McGuire, the director and founder of the conservation organization Shark Stewards, also remembers surfers fleeing the ocean at the sign of a leopard shark (Triakis semifasciata), a harmless species with no history of dangerous encounters with humans; and even people too terrified to swim in pools.
Since the release of Jaws in 1975, shark populations have only fallen catastrophically. Over the last half-decade, populations of sharks and rays (a close evolutionary relative) have decreased by 71%. More than 100 million sharks are killed each year, and over 30% of all shark and ray species are considered threatened.
After analyzing 109 shark films released between 1958 and 2019, Le Busque found 96% (105) of the films overtly portrayed sharks as potentially threatening to humans. Of the remaining four films, three covertly portrayed the potential threat of sharks to humans. And only one film, Finding Dory, did not present sharks as threatening to humans.
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