One is an atrocious piece of home-brewed killer shark crap. The other is a sleekly produced home invasion thriller. Guess which one I’d ever bother watching a second time.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST SHARK (2015)
Oh yes I did. I fastened my seat belt and brought my hubby along for the raid. Hey. It was the night of July 4th, and since life is short, I’d rather watch something new rather than Jaws for the gazillionth time.
Things start out so bad I really assumed the hubby was going to make me turn it off. This no budget, virtually homemade movie seemed to be taking itself way too seriously. The only thing that kept us going was the growling CGI shark, which looks like something from a 1993 Super Nintendo video game. We laughed out loud every time he took a nosedive (right over an entire person).
Following the absurd initial setup – a teacher agrees to help the government after a killer shark is released into a lake – a trio of students heads to an island for some fun. The pirate-like boatman that takes them there absolutely deserves the award for best performance. He was really into his part.
Once the cartoon shark attacks the kids on the boat, the movie seems to accept what a piece of trash it is. We are bombarded by funny lines as what looks pretty much like a paper cutout shark keeps growling while flying across the screen.
Yep, this shark flies, and some of the jokes catering to that fact are fricking hilarious. And best of all, the actors are so bad that it’s ten times as brilliant when they accidentally totally nail the delivery of a line at random times.
Other highlights include a reference to Rocky Horror, plus a half-finished “set”—a room that is only partially painted with exposed sheetrock. Seriously.
The only bad thing I can say about Raiders of the Lost Shark is that this hour long movie (when you minus the credits) should have been about 20 minutes shorter to get to the second half’s hilarity sooner.
INTRUDERS (2015)
On top of a rockin’ cast, Intruders has something really cool going for it if you’re a fan of home invasion flicks. The twist. The twist is quite refreshing. The twist comes early in the film. The twist makes me lose pretty much all interest as it creates a situation in which there is no one for me to connect with or root for. The “bad” guys don’t seem to be all that bad, and the “good” guys don’t seem all that good for a majority of the movie as it tries to sustain a level of mystery. This not knowing had the opposite effect on me. I felt it sucked out any sense of suspense.
It’s hard to say much without giving things away, so here’s the general plot outline. A woman suffering from agoraphobia finds herself with quite the conundrum; three men have busted into the home she’s afraid to leave.
This begins a cat and mouse game that turns into a mind fuck for everyone concerned as the truth very slowly unfolds as to why they are all in that situation. Daddy issues, sexual abuse, anger, guilt—it’s like The Strangers meets I Spit on Your Grave without the tension of the first, the brutality of the second, or the sense of satisfaction one might want to feel when the bad guys get what’s coming to them.
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