Tubarão Touro

After a series of strange attacks, the sheriff and game-warden at a small-town lake community slowly realize the stories about a killer bull shark living in the area are true and set out to corral the shark from attacking the community while trying to keep it quiet from the public.

This was a rather problematic indie shark movie. Among the few things this gets right is the generally fun series of attacks here that manage to overcome the low-budget indie setup in place. The initial attacks with the swimmers in the lake, including those that get dragged underwater and chomped on, generate some decent enough sequences to get an idea of what they're dealing with. The realism of the scenes featuring the shark just coming up and chomping on victims in a normal, grounded setting is quite fun that goes hand-in-hand with the equally grounded encounters trying to kill it. Relying on the more realistic nature of keeping the hunters in realistic boats and not going overboard with the stunt-work and action which is a nice touch that gives this some likable features. It's not that much but it keeps this one going somewhat. There are a few issues with this one. One of the main drawbacks here is the rather uninvolved setup that takes quite a while to get to anything interesting due to a flurry of cliches and formulaic setups. The focus on the family squabbling through a divorce due to his drunken habits, or alcoholism that's led to the divorce makes for a troubling start here filled with uninviting and cliched setups with family drama to start the film. The different forms of trouble found at the office, with the different offices attempting his contact him or going through the motions of contacting him for their own means manages to drag this one down even further into a slough that's rather hard to overcome since hardly any of these tie into the other storylines at play with a disjointed appearance. That doesn't take into account the fact that a majority of the story is so disjointed and chaotic that it's somewhat difficult to stay invested. Not only is this beginning tough to get into, but the secondary storylines involving the family strife and cover-ups that try to hide the shark's existence are also equally uninteresting and just fuel cliched setups that affect the pacing. As well, that also doesn't take into account the usual tropes surrounding this one including the highly underwhelming special effects at play. The shark is shown in a rather intriguing anatomically-accurate-yet-obviously-CGI setup that manages to make the shark look quite goofy and cheesy as a result since the focus on continuing the highly aggravating tactics of featuring it looks cheap. Not fitting into the environments, looking out of place due to the insertion into different settings and the ever-prominent dimension changes that take place which keeps it looking pretty underwhelming. Since there's not much in the way of practical effects here or even blood and gore featured here, this all helps to make it feel somewhat underwhelming.

Rated Unrated/R: Language and Violence.

Texas Game Warden Spencer Timms (Thom Hallum) battles a man-eating bull shark that has made itself at home in a Texan lake, feeding on unwary tourists.

The title of this low budget shark-in-a-lake horror positively invites the single-word summary 'Bull Sh**', but someone else beat me to it.

Written and directed by Brett Bentman, for whom a Spielberg-like meteoric rise to fame is extremely unlikely, Bull Shark joins the likes of House Shark, Ghost Shark, Sand Sharks, Jurassic Shark and Sharkenstein as one of the worst in a sub-genre that has churned out plenty of stinkers.

The terrible script spends more time on the protagonist's drink problem, his failing marriage, and a totally pointless subplot concerning a corrupt mayor than it does the shark, which isn't necessarily a bad thing given how crappy the titular fish is: the CGI shark effects are dreadful, and more often than not, it's just a plastic fin on a stick poking out of the water.

1/10. Have fun identifying the comments posted by the director's friends.

No, but it's like a true train wreck you can't stop watching.

Basically it's Jaws on a Great Lake. Despite some decent imagery along with a bad cgi shark the poor acting really makes the movie hard to stop watching.

I laughed at parts I wasn't meant to and didn't laugh when I was.

It's a bad movie, but if you can watch with a friend who enjoys a bad movie to laugh at and have fun picking apart this is your movie.

A game warden who answers to a county sheriff and a local mayor? Haha!

Not the worst rip off of "Jaws" that I've ever seen, but still not good.

At least they got the whole, bull sharks can live in fresh water, correct.

I've seen a few reviews about how unrealistic it is about sharks living in freshwater lakes. There have been sightings and attacks in the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario, Trinity River. Lakes in Louisiana and California. So that part is probably the only true and good thing about this film. The public needs to be educated, but since this movie is more an SNL Jaws parody (without the comedic approach) they really dropped the ball. And really, it's not even about sharks. It's about a small Texas town with corrupt political figures and a game warden struggling with alcoholism, divorce and being a bad father. The sharks have small guest appearances a couple times and then some plastic fins a few other times. Nope. No thanks.

*The people behind this film have a funny stereotype of Texas. But seriously dude, we're not a bunch of beer drinking till we fall over drunk people.*