Super Shark

Super Shark (2011)

** (out of 4)

Offshore drilling is to blame for a giant shark that gets set free and goes on killing rampage.

Fred Olen Ray directed this low-budget creature feature that's certainly not an Oscar-winner but then again the goal wasn't to win awards. Ray is an expert when it comes to these types of movies so he knows what his fans want and that's pretty much what he delivers. I mean, if you're willing to sit through a movie called SUPER SHARK then I'm sure you want to see a shark, correct? Well you're going to get plenty of shark action because the director gives us all sorts of action scenes and plenty of shark footage.

Yes, the CGI shark looks fake but then again all of these movies feature fake looking sharks but for the most part this one here looks good enough. There are plenty of scenes with the shark attacking people, jumping through the air and even crashing onto land. Just wait until the end when the shark does battle against a really fake looking tank. Tim Abell and Catherine Annette are good enough in their roles and for the most part the characters are entertaining.

Obviously SUPER SHARK isn't a masterpiece but for this type of movie it's entertaining enough to watch.

SUPER SHARK is another nonsense B-movie monster flick that comes to us courtesy of the SyFy Channel. This one's directed by cheese specialist Fred Olen Ray, so you have some idea of what to expect from the quality: it's ridiculous, nonsensical, and barely hangs together as a proper movie.

The inspiration behind this one, as with so many, seems to be PIRANHA 3D, with the camera repeatedly ogling bikini babes and generally putting to the audience a kind of fun-loving, hedonistic lifestyle. Into this nonsense comes a prehistoric shark which has grown to gigantic proportions and seeks to wreak havoc on the local population. The efforts of the typically evil corporate villains only serve to increase the menace.

You know exactly what to expect from a film like SUPER SHARK, so here we go: bad acting across the board, terrible CGI effects, and a general lack of cohesion. This one's played out in a tongue-in-cheek fashion which at least gives it a mildly campy air. Still, the effects of the giant shark really are terrible, and this is slim pickings indeed for monster lovers.

Unfortunately for this movie, I am calling it jaw-droppingly bad. I did my best to keep an open mind, as I could tell from the title that the film was not necessarily going to be good but had the potential to be a guilty pleasure. That is if they had tried putting effort into components like the story, script, characters and effects. Every single of those are done abysmally here in my opinion. Super Shark is a very poorly made movie, with effects looking so fake that I got the sense they were rushed through in construction. Even the editing manages to have a choppy feel to it. The music is a little better, but there is nothing outstanding about it either and it could have been more atmospherically used, to me it felt too obvious at times. The script doesn't feel natural whatsoever, it all feels very cheesy and stilted, while the story is ridiculous, suspense-less and completely unsurprising, complete with a pointless romance that is in danger of slowing Super Shark down. The characters I didn't give a tuppence about, they are little more than walking clichés that don't do much other than acting foolish. The shark of the title is cheap in look and not menacing at all, while the attack scenes are choppily edited, unintentionally funny and as far away as thrilling or scary as you can go. Of the acting, Sarah Lieving is the only one who looks as though she is trying, all the others look bored. Overall, jaw-droppingly awful. 1/10 Bethany Cox

An offshore drilling accident releases a giant shark. When the shark flies and walks on land threatening to kill all in it's path, marine biologist Kat Carmichael arrives to destroy the shark and save beach-goers. Her attempts at saving the day are not helped by the bad guy suit and his flunky, who are only interested in money. With time running out for bikini modelling contestants, and beach loving humans in general, Carmichael must recruit help to destroy the superb shark.

I thought I'd scrapped the bottom of the barrel of awfulness watching 'Sharknado' and it's sequel 'Sharknado 2: The Second One' but at least they were tongue in cheek, with there ridiculousness. Alongside 'Jaws 3' and 'Jaws 4: The Revenge' SuperShark actually seems to be taking itself seriously, at that's it's problem..

2/10 1 point for pretty girls in bikinis (yes really) and 1 point for the effort of making a movie about making a movie about a super shark that can fly and walk on land

Don't even try to take this film seriously, because it's obviously made for laughs. I saw it with some friends on a "b-movie night" and we laughed our asses off! The overly plastic animation of the shark, how it attacks and the clichés of the main characters almost getting it on with each other on screen, the bad acting (seriously, these "actors" are even worse than you in drama class), the way how the shark overcomes the attacks, etc etc.

Even the camera work could've been better, but this film is just another stick of hay on the postmodern pile where I'm looking for needles that don't have "property of Christopher Nolan" laser printed on them (although he barely touches Kubrick's genius, but that's another topic).

If you're a critic you will hate it, if you wanna see a movie for super laughs, get super shark.