I couldn’t wait until Memorial Day weekend to kick off some summer style viewing, so I dived into a trio of goofy shark flicks. Let’s check them out.
TOXIC SHARK (2017)
This is how you do a cheesy CGI shark movie right. And even better? It’s a shark/zombie hybrid flick!
3 cute guys come to a resort island because one of them broke up with his girlfriend. 3 girls come to the resort island because one of them broke up with her boyfriend. You know what that means.
Meanwhile, the resort owner is tipped off that there might be something toxic in the water, but he ignores the warning. You know what that means….
The toxic shark starts attacking right away, and there is plenty of green goo spitting and over-the-top, full-body swallowing scenes. Eventually one girl is bit, survives…and becomes hungry for flesh. Teehee.
There’s not a ton of focus on people turning into zombies, but it’s just enough to complicate matters for the survivors trying to figure out how to get off the island.
This film has it all—silly kills, bad character choices, great underwater POV shots that are terrifying even in bad CGI shark movies, and a series of complications to make matters worse for the survivors (leading to even more bad decisions). And you gotta give props to a film that shows diversity…by featuring one lone Black guy on an entire island paradise filled with young people partying. Sigh.
AVALANCHE SHARKS (2014)
When I forced my hubby to make it a Saturday sharkathon, he warned me after Toxic Sharks that you can’t top the best bad shark movie ever and we should just call it quits. I pointed out that we’d never know if it was the best bad shark movie ever until we watched another one.
He was right, but I’m going to make sure he never reads this post and learns that he was right once in 29 years.
Avalanche Sharks has SyFy silliness written all over it. There’s not a lot to invest in the characters that come to a ski resort and get gulped down by CGI icicle sharks, which is fine, because the only reason to watch this film is for the gulps.
The sharks that swim through the snow came into being because they were summoned by a Native American man as part of a revenge plot. That’s all you really need to know. Just note that the kills and action are much more fun (and funnier) in the final act.
THE REQUIN (2022)
I heard this movie was bad, but I seriously can’t process what I watched. If my memory serves me correct, this would have to be the worst mainstream shark flick I’ve seen since The Shallows.
Alicia Silverstone and her man or on vacation and staying in a house on stilts. For incomprehensible reasons, they aren’t warned way in advance that a devastating storm is approaching that will assuredly wipe out all the houses on stilts near the water, so they are never ordered by authorities to evacuate.
Conveniently, theirs is the only house that is washed away.
Oddly, no search party is assembled to go look for it the next day.
Wouldn’t you know, Alicia’s man has a bleeding wound on his leg.
In order to get the attention of a far off ship, the couple decides to light a fire on what remains of their house. Needless to say, they accidentally burn their house down.
Just like Jack and Rose, they can’t both fit completely on the piece of driftwood, so when the sharks show up, the husband can no longer be all there for Alicia.
At this point I was convinced this is all a delusion that Alicia is having because she’s in shock, because it’s all so ridiculous. She makes it to a tiny piece of land, fights off a shark clamped to her leg with a piece of coral (this is after already killing another shark with a piece of wood), sees some drunk dude on a tiny fishing boat, goes back in the damn water to get on his boat, and is suddenly targeted by a mega shark that appears out of nowhere and is more determined to kill Alicia than the shark was to kill Ellen Brody in Jaws: The Revenge.
The action was so absurd at this point I was praying for either Alicia or myself to wake up from this nightmare. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all just a bad dream for either of us.
