Shark Night 3D

The college friends Nick (Dustin Milligan), Beth (Katharine McPhee), Malik (Sinqua Walls), Maya (Alyssa Diaz), Blake (Chris Zylka) and Gordon (Joel David Moore) are invited by their friend Sara Palski (Sara Paxton) to spend the weekend at her saltwater lake house in Louisiana. They stop at a bar to buy supplies and Malik has a friction with the rednecks Red (Joshua Leonard) and Dennis Crim (Chris Carmack), but Sara resolves the situation since Dennis is her ex-boyfriend. Then the group meets another friend of Sara, Sheriff Greg Sabin (Donal Logue).

When Malik is skiing in the lake, he has a severed arm by a shark and his friends seek for help. But sooner they learn that the lake is infested of different species of sharks and they have a more dangerous problem threatening them.

"Shark Night 3D" is a silly and absurd rip-off "Jaws" with the storyline that recalls "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", with a group of youngsters that travels to the countryside and are slaughtered by sharks. They are actually victims of a gang of psychopaths that make money in a website with snuff movies showing the sharks attacking and killing people. Chris Carmack is scary with his psychotic behavior but the film is dull, ridiculous and the special effects are very poor. But maybe the greatest problem is that "Shark Night 3D" is a B-movie with the pretension of being a serious movie. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Terror na Água 3D" ("Terror in the Water 3D")

This movie started out so great, it had that whole "Jaws"-theme going on, and it really looked like it was going to be a movie that would pay homage to the classic "Jaws" movies, then it all came crashing down hard and went downhill.

"Shark Night" is without a doubt one of the stupidest story lines I have ever seen in a shark movie. The whole plot was just so far-fetched that it didn't even come off remotely plausible. That whole "oh-you-hurt-me-years-ago-and-now-it-is-payback-time" plot didn't work at all! It was ludicrous and it really made the movie bad.

Another thing that the movie had working against it was the darkness. Most of the movie was shot at night with little or no lighting at all, and you couldn't really see what was going on at times. That was so lame. When you sit down to watch movies you don't want to be kept in the dark and have little chance to see what's going on. Had they kept the movie in daylight it would have worked so much better.

As for the characters in the movie, well you hardly got to immerse yourself in any of the characters, aside from Sara (played by Sara Paxton) and to some extend Dennis (played by Chris Carmack). The rest of the characters were nothing more than bystanders with shallow stories to contribute to the plot.

The cast themselves were good, though. The people they had cast for the various roles actually did good jobs, and that was the main thing that "Shark Night" had working for it.

Having seen "Shark Night" now I feel very disappointed and cheated out of my time, because this movie was disappointing on so many levels. It is only once in awhile that there is a really nice shark movie to hit the market, "Shark Night" however, wasn't one of them.

And the ending of the movie, are you kidding me? Come on! I am not going to spoil it here by revealing it, but wow, that was an ending you saw coming a mile away, and it was just so anti-climatic.

Sara (Sara Paxton) and her college friends travel to her lake house on the Louisiana Gulf for a wild weekend of beer pong, sunbathing, and death by shark. Be mindful of the PG-13 rating because, if you go into this expecting the finned version of Aja's silicon laden Piranha 3D, you'll be sorely disappointed. The most you're going to get to feast your eyes on is a brief shot of Katharine McPhee's and Alyssa Diaz's side boobs.

It's light on the carnage and heavy on the sentimental and often over-dramatic monologues. The gore is pretty watered down for the teen/tween audience. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing - it's a boring thing. While there are quite a few deaths, the attacks are short cut scenes that end with the camera lingering over pools of red coloring dye to signify, yep, they're dead.

What's missing from this humdinger is good ol' fashioned fun. Most of its ilk celebrate the B-movie campiness with richly funny dialog, revel in the opportunity to mock its genre, or totally go off the deep end with exaggerated kills and/or gratuitous nudity. I realize Shark Night 3D wasn't made to be an in-your-face exploitation film but it's not Open Water either. It falls to the wayside because it has no guts, literally and figuratively.

¨Terror runs deep¨

Shark Night is a terrible movie, I have to admit it, but somehow I ended up having a fun time with it. The performances are low key, the script borderlines in the ridiculous, and the story is really predictable, but in the mist of all the disaster I found myself having an enjoyable experience. Shark Night is a movie that takes its subject matter very lightly, it doesn't try to be a serious horror film, or even try to show a lot of gore or being scary. It's a movie that recognizes its limitations and plays along with it. What makes this bad movie stand out from the rest is that it ends up being bad in a good way, in other words it makes you laugh because it's so bad. The plot is so bad that it seems that director David R. Ellis decided to just play along with the audience and let us have a good time without having to make the film gory or extremely violent. He gives us a lot of sharks, a lot of kills, and if taken lightly like the producers want you to you might end up having a good time like I did. If you are expecting a scary movie with a lot of gore than I warn you stay away from Shark Night because it's just a light comedy with some bad acting and bad special effects. If you go into this movie expecting nothing else than that, just like I did, then you might end up having a decent time. One thing is for sure: screenwriters Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg won't be winning any awards for their dumbed down script.

It's time to explain my least favorite part of the film: the plot. Shark Night takes place in a lake near the Louisiana Gulf coast (yes you read right, there are sharks in a lake and there is a perfectly good reason for that). A group of teenagers decide to go to Sara's (Sara Paxton) lake house to celebrate Malik's (Sinqua Walls) recent success in an exam that will allow him to enter college. His friends Nick (Dustin Milligan) and Gordon (Joel David Morse) were the ones who helped him study so in order to thank them he brings them along although they aren't part of the cool group. At the house Malik plans to propose to his girlfriend Maya (Alyssa Diaz). Beth (Katharine McPhee) and Blake (Chris Zylka) also decide to go along with the rest of the gang and have some fun at the lake. Before arriving to the house however they have a small quarrel with a pair of local hillbillies Red (Joshua Leonard) and Dennis (Chris Carmack) with whom Sara is acquainted with, but everything goes on as normal. At the lake they meet the Sheriff, Sabin (Donal Logue), who greets them warmly and even has a couple of drinks with them. The kids are ready to have a great time and begin enjoying the lake, but what they don't know is that the lake is infested with sharks. What begins as innocent fun, ends up being a nightmare for Sara and her friends.

The actors are all relatively unknown and there is a good reason for that (they aren't exactly great actors), but you can't have a shark film without hot young teens. The movie really works better as a comedy than as a horror film because the plot is just ridiculous, but I did have a fun time with how the shark attacks were exaggerated. There was one scene were a shark jumps several feet over the water and eats one of the kids that is riding a motorbike. These sharks were just so exaggerated that you couldn't help but laugh at the silliness of each scene. There are several more death scenes like this which are hugely exaggerated and I found quite funny. There is no gore because Shark Attack had a PG-13 rating so don't expect much of the death scenes from the Final Destination producers. I haven't seen the Piranhas film so I can't make comparisons with it, but I heard this is nothing like the gore that film had, so if you want a stronger film or expect something like Piranhas then skip this film because you will be disappointed. Shark Night has nothing memorable to it, but I did have a surprisingly good time with it so I got to give it a passing grade, although the lowest possible one.

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I was not expecting something as enjoyable or over the top as last year's Piranha 3D but I was at least expecting some time killing shark attack fun. It seems however that they couldn't even pull that off.

The script is horrific and the plot is ho-hum but more importantly, takes way too long to get going. Every character is dull and hollow and the stale acting doesn't help. But in all honesty this could be forgiven had the film actually delivered on what was expected. There's surprisingly very little in the way of shark carnage. The PG13 rating means death scenes mostly consist of some flailing in red water. Other death scenes are almost completely off-screen. I'm not a gore fanatic but when the film has nothing else going for it, this could have easily saved it to a degree. They don't even capitalize on the 3D. There were a few genuinely creepy moments in the film that actually made me want to cover my eyes (something I haven't wanted to do in over 15 years)but these are so few and far between. I longed for more of these but the film seems to be too interested in silly melodramatic plot. The film also just takes itself way too seriously to the point where it just isn't fun to watch... which is all you'd be wanting going into a 3D horror movie about sharks.

It's a cheap attempt to cash in on the success of 'Piranha 3D' but without the tongue-in-cheek self-awareness or over the top gory thrills, there's very little to recommend in 'Shark Night 3D'. It could have worked as a campy throwback or It could have even worked as a more serious horror movie because I did feel uneasy at times but it really doesn't do either any justice.