Random Movie: Shark Night (2011)

Much like #pbf said in his review of Piranha, there are certain elements in a movie like this that almost defy you as a viewer to question them, thus making them exempt from critical thinking. I will fully admit to buying into those aspects whole-heartedly for Pirahna but I think my expectations were too high for Shark Night (or Shark Night 3D in theaters). From the illustrious David Ellis, director of the worst ever Final Destination movie (and that’s saying something), Shark Night straddled the line between good and so-campy-and-bad-that-it-is-in-fact-good that I was unimpressed with the final outcome.

If you substitute Haddonfield for this random Louisiana lake and insert sharks for Jason Voorhees, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this film. Sara (Sara Paxton) and her college friends come to stay at Lake Crosby for a random weekend of fun and shenanigans. Unfortunately, the good times and fun are interrupted when one of the group is attacked while water-skiing and loses an arm courtesy of a random shark in the lake. Insert “Your arm’s off!” Holy Grail quote here. Fortunately Nick (Dustin Milligan) is pre-med and knows that the one-armed man must be saved quickly. Cut to various attempts to leave the lake-front home that are derailed by shark attacks and that is a good chunk of the film. Well, other than the diabolical villain explaining why sharks are in the lake without really going into how one acquires a shark and deposits it into a lake on a budget.

I appreciate where Ellis and writers Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg try to go with not so random shark attacks but it did not quite gel for me. While it homages the classic slasher film template often, it is nice to see a horror film with a minimal amount of doucebag characters who aren’t solely interested in sex, drugs, or various poor lifestyle choices. For the most part, all of the characters were smart enough and not annoying other than their proclivity for getting back into the water that has been confirmed as HOUSING SHARKS! Granted, many had good reasons to leave via jetski or boat but when you consider that the main adversaries are water-bound sharks, staying as far away from the water would typically be a good start to stay safe.

As far as the ancillary villain (or villains) go, their motives were all over the place from revenge for a boating accident years ago to just attempting to cash in on the hoopla of Shark Week. And for the first motive, why go through the trouble of capturing or acquiring sharks as opposed to a rusty switchblade or a microwave oven to exact vengeance on someone? Perhaps that was one of those moments so over-the-top that it should be funny, but I was merely scratching my head. Not to mention that if you want to kill someone via shark, why would you first put them into a shark cage? Again, I’m sure there is a completely illogical reason to do this so I’ll move on knowing that I don’t understand it.

Much like Ellis’ previous film THE Final Destination, this was shown in theaters in 3D. While I did not have a chance to catch the extra-dimensional aspect of this film, I did get the silly CGI aftermath as the sharks or debris or whatever was initially 3D looks silly as it juts toward the screen like that random shot of the shark in Jaws 3D. The cast is largely good considering the material they had to work with. I was especially impressed with Joel David Moore who seems to have embraced the fact that he can pull off a college student at 35. I feel like I am being a bit too hard on this film. It’s no cinematic achievement but it did not really strive to be that either. It is a pretty entertaining, if forgettable, 90 minutes of film though.