Film Review: Shark Night 3D

What the shit is this movie about?
It's impossible to tell from the poster.

Is that a shark fin?! Oh my god, I think it's a fin!
It's not really a fin; it's actually just a guaranteed return on investment. Don't beat yourself up - it's a fairly common mistake. I don't know if you've been reading the papers lately, but there's been a fair few human casualties attributed to shark attacks. It's only appropriate, then, that Hollywood pays tribute to the fallen in a suitably tasteful and befitting manner.

'Tasteful '.

What's that you say; we don't have a 'tasteful and befitting' script? Fuck it then, lets just do this instead. Shark Night 3D - boy, they don't give you any plot clues in the title either do they? - it's about two hick loons, some college kids, and a bunch of sharks; all with a rather careless attitude towards health and safety.

His arm's fallen off.
Well, I say 'fallen'...

The traditional assortment of startlingly beautiful, bikini-clad teenagers arrive at a picture-perfect lodge; a lodge conveniently positioned in close proximity to a shark-infested lake. Say - I don't suppose that these two key elements will run into each other at some point?

How convenient.

Safely ensconced within the lodge-of-certain-death, the group kick off the proceedings with a shamelessly mechanical, plot-furthering debate about whether or not a shark could realistically inhabit a lake. It's just what the audience has been waiting for - how can we possibly enjoy a shark film without some kind of reassurance that the events depicted stay true-to-life? You may remember that classic Box Office disaster, 'Jaws'? Yeah, well that wasn't a true story, and where's the director now? Nowhere, that's where. In professional limbo.

You won't remember this, because no one has ever seen or heard of it.

I'm just going to throw this out there: I don't think that an audience full of people who have paid good money to watch a CGI shark tooth-fuck the z-list care much about the zoological accuracy of what they are seeing. 

All well and good, but what I really want to know is this:
could this jet-ski-humping shark realistically inhabit a saltwater lake?

My disregard for the (ahem) 'science' aside, the teenagers come to the conclusion that a shark might indeed inhabit a lake, despite it being a VERY DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT to the sea 'n all, because this right here is a saltwater lake. So that's ok then. Because, y'know, that minute detail was the only thing about Shark Night 3D which didn't ring true to life.

VICTIM: 'Hey! What the shit are you doing here?'
SHARK: 'This is a saltwater lake, actually'.
VICTIM: 'Oh. I'm sorry. My bad'.
SHARK: 'That's OK. I get this ALL THE TIME'.
VICTIM: 'I'll bet! Not many people know that a shark can inhabit a saltwater lake'.
SHARK: 'I know! I get comments, like, on a daily basis'.
VICTIM: ''People are so ignorant about the natural migrational habits of saltwater-dwelling fish'.
SHARK: 'Aren't they? I'm always like, jeez, get some ed-joo-cay-shun!'
VICTIM: 'Hahaha, yeah!'
SHARK: 'Hahaha, so true'.
VICTIM: 'Ha. Hahaha'.
SHARK: 'So anyway, let's get to it, cuz, uh, I'm pretty hungry'.

Hello boys and girls! I am a shark, 'living in my natural environment'.

Hello boys and girls, I am a shark 'living in a convenient and spectacularly lazy plot twist'.
Is it just me, or do I look...I dunno....meaner to you?

The teens start doing the usual kind of thing that college kids do on films; mainly this involves behaving like prize-winning cunts while trying to unsuccessfully to breed with one another. One of the youngsters, a young 'Jock' type, prone to thumping his friends aggressively on the back in a frankly ridiculous simulation of alpha-male behaviour, chooses to spend the afternoon waterskiing. That's right; he decides to go waterskiing on a gloomy lake riddled with man-eating sharks. WHO DOES THAT?

You're doing it wrong.

A mischievous young shark observes the jock doing the waterskiing thing, and decides to join in. Well, I say 'join in', but what the shark actually does is knock the jock off his waterski pedestal and eat the shit out of him. It's a very poignant moment, actually, because the jock has this whole back story about how he comes from a really poor background, and he's just been offered a contract with a Major League Baseball Team, and..oh wait...that's right....I don't actually give a shit.

OM NOM NOM.

The jock crawls back to the lodge. I don't know if you've ever noticed, right, because maybe you have alot less time on your hands than I do, but it's pretty hard to crawl when you only have the one arm going on there to help you out. It's pretty tricksy, I'd say. A bit like trying to swim with your hands tied behind your back, or trying to maintain your integrity during the Leveson enquiry when you're guilty as fuck. Sorry, I meant to say 'when you're James Murdoch'. 


You can sort of slide, I guess, but it'll take you like, oh, a good few days to cover some decent ground. With that in mind, let's debate how feasible it would for a one-armed jock, a one-armed jock who has recently lost a good 3-4 pints of blood, mind, to crawl back to the lodge-of-certain-death following a serious shark attack? Shall we agree that the answer to this question is: 'not very feasible at all'. Hold your horses, though, because it turns out that this jock has a saltwater arm.

A saltwater arm: possibly the shittiest superhero power ever?

The teenagers are shocked to discover that this genetic saltwater miracle will not save the jock from bleeding to death as a result of his terrible wounds. At least the stump will be sterile though, right? We don't have to worry about infection setting in or anything, which is good, because rather than immediately take him to a hospital, the teenagers decide to stay at the lodge and just chill for a bit. It's the X-Factor Final, right! You're going NOWHERE my lad.

Hey dude! Bring me back some Cheetos!

The jock abandons his friends, and leaves Lodge Island behind with a view to hunting down his piscarian assailant. He takes a spear with him, because..uh..well he needs a weapon, and..that..was...the...best... weapon.... that...a...one...armed...man...could...find? The jock dies (obviously) because hunting a shark down with a spear and only one arm isn't necessarily a recipe for revenge success. After his death, the remaining teenagers split into two groups (good thinking guys - that particular tactic never ends badly in horror films), with one group hitching a lift from two sociopathic fishermen manning the world's flimsiest boat, and the other group staying behind to watch 'Pay It Forward' and talk about how sad it is that Haley Joel Osment turned out to be a crackhead.


Prepare yourself for this next shocking revelation: the whole 'let's split up into two groups' strategy doesn't  quite go to plan. Instead of reaching the mainland and contacting the relevant authorities for help, the kids on the boat both die horribly. I know I know: it's a Keyser-Soze-worthy twist. It turns out that two sociopathic fishermen are not the white knights in shining armour one might expect them to be, and instead of coming to everyone's rescue, they instead feed 50% of the remaining teenagers to the sharks.

This is what happens if you get into an unlicensed mini-cab, girls.

Back at the lodge, the archetypal innocent blonde lead is telling her love-interest that one of the fishermen tried to murder her once. You know it's funny, if a fisherman had ever tried to kill me, I probably wouldn't ask him to give my best friend a lift to the mainland, but you know I'm kind of uptight in that way.

Soon-to-be-dead brunette: 'But this guy's trustworthy, tight?'
Blonde cliche with curiously unquestioned penchant for sending her friends to a fate of certain death:
'Oh, sure, sure! He's like, the best!'

Bizarrely, the blonde girl's blatant disregard for her friend's welfare is completely ignored by the love interest. Do men actually listen at all? I don't think that they do. If they did, surely he would have said something more along the lines of: 'What the shit? You mad bitch! You just let her onto that maniac's fucking boat after he tried to KILL you? And you didn't think to fucking MENTION it? Stay the fuck away from me! You deserve to be in jail! Motherfucker!'

Seriously Dude; get some fucking standards.

On and on it goes. With the blonde girl and her anything-for-a-blow-job partner eventually coming to the conclusion that it might be about time for them to put a call through to the local Sheriff's office. Where I come from, we like to call for help BEFORE everybody gets eaten, but I guess I'm just a silly ol' square that way. And when the emergency services finally make their long-awaited arrival? Well they turn out to be....a murderous, sociopathic Sheriff, armed with a rohypnol-laced flask full of Spaghetti Bolognese. Yes, that's right. He brings Spaghetti. To the scene of a terrible tragedy. Nothing odd about that, nope nothing at all.

Did somebody here call for some help?

The Sheriff cunningly drugs Love Interest via the not-remotely-suspicious medium of a hot flask filled with emergency spaghetti bolognese, while Blonde Girl slowly comes to the realisation that her local Council need to start investing in CRB checks for staff members. It's a tense moment, or at least it would have been, if the fat bitch sat next to me in the cinema auditorium hadn't started rustling her popcorn like her fucking life depended on it. The Sheriff consults his Sociopath's Handbook For Dealing With Difficult Situations, and comes to the conclusion that the best remedy involves tying Love Interest to a chair, and then swiftly booting him into a barrel full of Mako Shark. That's what they refer to as 'best practise' in Louisiana.

Sheriff: 'I hate how us Southerners are stereotyped as these crazy hick-ass lunatics all the time'.
Man tied to a chair drowning in barrel of Mako shark: 'Yeah, you're so, like, victimised'.

Instead of eating Love Interest, the Mako Shark looks at him grumpily for a moment, before giving him ample opportunity to escape. Now, I've never been tied to a chair in a barrel filled with Mako shark, but I have heard that sharks are notoriously misunderstood and have developed an undeserved reputation for...oh hang on they've eaten the Sheriff. Love Interest breaks free from his restraints (in case you're wondering: they were saltwater restraints) and pushes the Sheriff into the barrell full of Mako. The Mako don't look at the Sheriff grumpily before disregarding him though, they immediately attack the Sheriff in a frenzy of convenient brutality. That's the thing with sharks; they much prefer to eat local produce. 

Eat local. 

Love Interest leaves...uh...well he leaves wherever the hell he is, I think it's some kind of garden shed...and goes to...uh...well he goes to rescue Blonde Girl from one of the sociopathic fishermen. You know it's odd. Usually when I visit a new town for the first time, I don't know where anything is, and I kind of have to explore it a bit. But love interest just kind of KNOWS. He knows where to find stuff in a town he has never visited before, and he knows where to find Blonde Girl even though she is out on the lake and could be anywhere. I guess because it's a saltwater lake. It's a well-know fact that saltwater can direct you to the location where a sociopathic fisherman is s-l-o-w-l-y trying to murder the crazy-ass bitch you have crush on.

What do you mean 'now's not the time to give me a blow job'?

The sociopathic fishermen have put Blonde Girl in a cage underwater to keep her safe. And she is safe, but 'safe' in the way that Gaddaffi was safe in that tunnel. Or Saddam was safe in that hole in the ground. She's drowning a bit and that, but hey, I'll bet that more people have died crossing the road than have died in a cage underwater without breathing apparatus surrounded by ravenous sharks.

All nice and safe.

Love Interest's a player, though, and nobody be tellin' him what to do! So he extricates Blonde Girl from her saline safe house and the two of them swim back up to the surface so that they can finish the film with the obligatory kiss-of-success. There'll be a twist, though, because it's this kind of going-through-the-familiar-motions nonsense that we've all paid good ticket money to see. So what's it going to be? Is blonde girl going to turn out to be a sociopath?

Blonde Girl - she's jus' a free spirit.
In the same way that Rose and Fred West were 'free spirits'.

Blonde Girl doesn't like to be pigeon-holed by sanity; why else would she ask her murderous ex-boyfriend the fisherman to ferry her college friends about? Or perhaps Love Interest will surprise us all and reveal himself to be some kind of half-man, half-shark hybrid? No, that's not it. So come on then, what is it? It's got to be something good, right? Something really good, because boy are they dragging out this whole 'wrapping up the film' thing, and...oh the credits have rolled. *Looks down at torn ticket stub with a mixture of hate and self-loathing*