Red Water

Taking a trip together, a woman heads out with her friends for a special anniversary boat trip out to sea where the group fails to notice a killer shark roaming the area which strands them in the middle of the ocean forcing her into a vicious battle against the bloodthirsty creature to try to get away alive.

There's quite a lot to really like in this one. Among its better attributes is the solid and straightforward story that manages to combine the influences from several entries into a single feature that comes off as quite logical how they're mixed together. The main inspiration focuses on a group of individuals stranded at sea while being targeted by a Great White Shark stalking and killing them one by one. That carries on through a large part of the first half here where the group is attacked while enjoying their boat trip and are forced into a series of struggles to survive the situation. Either trying to get onto a working boat, preserve their strength after being wounded, or alerting others to their presence all come about following that storyline, and are made all the more suspenseful knowing the shark is following them. The second half, which focuses on the survivor being stranded alone on a piece of rock to get away from the shark, is a logical enough continuation and gives this a solid overall setup. With this in play, the film is able to go through some generally fun and enjoyably cheesy shark attack scenes made all the more fun for embracing that aspect heavily. The opening attack on the random divers that leaves the fateful fishing boat in the ocean is the perfect starting point here giving off the idea of the grossly exaggerated shark swimming around chomping and biting victims to pieces. That continues with the attacks in the sea where it takes out several victims leaving the survivors to try to swim to safety while the shark circles around the bloodsoaked water. Later scenes involving it trying to capsize or ram the boat with them inside offer up some more decent action scenes and spice up the proceedings with different types of sequences while the creature prowls the water around them. The big highlight here is the astounding second half, taking on a near-silent battle with the shark as the last survivor uses her wits and the elements to battle the shark alone which is far better than the cheesy action that has come before it making for a much more memorable time. These overall makes for a lot to like with it while there aren't too many flaws in the film but it does have some minor drawbacks. The main issue is the aforementioned need to bring two different films together in one location as that causes everything that happens here to be quite easy to spot where it's sourced from. Taking influence from the one film to show how they get stranded in the water and have to deal with the elements while the shark hunts them down is quite easy to see as this takes so many queues from there as to how they get stranded as well as the awful characterizations since just about everyone here other than the doctor are irritating and awful people to be around. The second half that looks at the other film is just as obvious focusing on the single survivor fighting back from a secured location while injured. All of this combines to make the film quite predictable and easy to follow what's going to happen. On top of that, the goofy CGI here will always be a hurdle to overcome since the goofy look of the shark and the way it moves and behaves will always produce more laughs than anything. All told, these issues are what hold it down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

I stumbled upon the 2021 Chinese shark movie titled "Red Water", though it was titled "Huge Shark" on the release that I got my hands on. Nevertheless, I opted to sit down and watch this movie without ever having heard about it.

And I have to say that I didn't exactly harbor any expectations to the movie given its title "Huge Shark" and also because the vast majority of shark movies are dubious at best. But director Zhaosheng Huang got the benefit of the doubt.

"Huge Shark" is a laughably bad shark movie. In fact it ranks up there among the top three of worst shark movies I have ever stumbled upon. And believe you me when I say that it wasn't even bad enough to be funny or enjoyable. No, this was just downright a horribly bad movie.

The storyline in the movie was fair enough, it was simplistic and very generic for a shark movie. But it worked out well enough for what it was.

Now, what ruined this movie was the dialogue, which was God awful to listen to. I have rarely witnessed such poorly written dialogue in my more than four decades of watching movies. The dialogue in "Huge Shark" was so toe-curling awful that I felt embarrassed just bearing witness to it. And worse yet, was the fact that the version of "Huge Shark" that I had stumbled upon was dubbed from Chinese into English. Yeah, a dubbed movie in 2021, what gives? And of course it was that archetypical horrible dubbing without emotion or conviction, that makes the characters feel like they are drugged out of their minds.

And then there was the CGI animated shark. Actually, in some scenes the CGI animated shark looked good and was actually a nice addition to the movie. And then there were scenes where you just had to rewind and go back and watch the scene again while wiping away tears from laughing from witnessing such an atrocity on the screen. And get this, in order to make the CGI animated shark more menacing, the movie makers opted to have the shark growling in a low rumbling sound. That was just ridiculous beyond belief.

If you enjoy hillariously bad shark movies then you are in for quite a treat, should you opt to sit down and waste 69 minutes on "Huge Shark". I, however, would strongly recommend against you wasting your time, money or effort on director Zhaosheng Huang's "Huge Shark" movie, because some of us did so you don't have to.

My rating of "Huge Shark" lands on a two out of ten stars.