It’s a zombie snoozefest, a shark winner, and a killer tow truck driver that takes too many wrong turns to reach his destination.
SHARK BAIT (2022)
After just complaining in a recent post about another typical shark movie with an Open Water setup, I decided it was safe to go back in the water.
Glad I did, because Shark Bait rises above its generic plot by delivering on the shark terror! I was most definitely on the edge of my seat during this one and even jumped a few times.
First I’ll get the annoying aspect out of the way—the need for these movies to create some sort of conflict to serve as character development. In this case, it’s the usual cheating partner/love triangle crap. Ugh. Why don’t these movies just look to the movie that started this whole young people trapped at sea with a shark concept—Jaws 2, the best shark movie ever. There were no glaring character flaws with those kids. They were all likable, they all got along, they all cared for each other, and as a result, we cared about all of them, which made the shark that much more terrifying.
But, in this day and age you can’t expect to ever watch a horror movie that’s going to allow you to fully root for the cast, so expect a redemption plot line. Yawn.
However, the shark action is most definitely not a yawn. Partying kids at the beach steal jet skis and go for a joy ride. There’s your character flaw. Why did we need anything else?
Anyway, they end up crashing into each other, someone is hurt, and before long a shark shows up and starts picking them off on by one.
Some unique attack scenes and gruesome and gory kills make this one of the best shark flicks I’ve seen in a while, but of course there are also several frustratingly tense scenes in which these characters make the dumbest decision of all, thinking going back in the water for various reasons is somehow the solution to saving themselves.
DEAD ZONE (2022)
I’m absolutely dumbfounded that this movie was planned, filmed, edited, and released as is. This is such a soulless zombie film—it lacks suspense, thrills, scares, clearly defined characters, or any hint of a plot.
A team of men with high tech gear and equipment is sent into a radiation soaked town on a mission.
They encounter fast running zombies that are just people with blood on their faces. The absence of makeup is masked by dark shadows, quick editing, and flashing light effects throughout the whole movie.
I’m not even sure what the details of their mission are, nor do I understand why such high tech gear isn’t impenetrable—zombies can bite right through this shit.
What we end up with is the armed guys walking around buildings in stealth mode, occasionally getting attacked by an onslaught of zombies despite their stealth, with a whole lot of footage inside their special helmets.
They eventually encounter a boss zombie with a whip-like tongue, and fight him to the death.
That’s it. That’s the movie. It was so uninspired the hubby and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
TOW (2022)
A while ago, Kane Hodder played a killer ambulance driver in Old 37. Now he plays a killer tow truck driver.
I’m going to say this right from the start—there is a thrilling suspense/stalker/slasher flick embedded in this move about a woman towed away in her car and brought to the killer’s lair (a junkyard I think), where she then plays a game of cat and mouse with him.
Unfortunately, the writers tried to add layers to that simple horror plot, and we are left with a mess that time jumps, vacillates between dreams and reality, and bounces back and forth between the stories of two sisters so much that there’s simply no way to comprehend what the narrative trajectory is.
In short, the twins watched their parents get killed by the murderer years before. Now he is about to be executed, but one of the sisters is convinced he’s using occult magic to come for them again.
Good luck piecing together how all that interweaves logically into the best part of the film, because I couldn’t.
