Dark Waters

Sci-Fi pulse pounder. An oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico is attacked by bloodthirsty bio-engineered sharks and a team of underwater specialists are summoned to investigate and put a plan into action to combat the out of control beasts. Some pretty bad acting and less than special effects. Attempted humor is lame and the gunfire on board the submarine is unrealistic. Research on using sharks as weapons? What the hell...this IS science fiction after all. The cast includes: Lorenzo Lamas, Bruce Gray, Rodrigo Abed and the sassy knockout Simmone Mackinnon. Not a total waste of time, but close. Of course the Sci-Fi Network is proud of this one.

I find it difficult to write a review on such an uninspired, unoriginal, unmotivated film. Neither sci-fi, action, horror, comedy, nor anything in between for that fact, it runs through the direct-to-video paces as comfortably as it needs to in order to still be watchable without ever being any good.

Lorenzo Llamas is an oceanic researcher hard up for some funding. Together with his assistant they seduce money out of socialites at (and after) fund raisers. One night the two are drugged and taken to the estate of a man whom might have a job for them. They are to escort him to an underwater researcher station to find out why communications have been lost. Things take a turn for the dangerous when they are set upon by a school of intelligent great white sharks.

The script is bored with plot holes like swiss-cheese. Not to mention script irregularities. Nothing ever seems to flow logically and every event seems to happen at random without regard for plot evolution.

That should be expected from a DtV flick, but the genre hopping comes strait out of left field. It starts out a horror film, becomes a sci-fi, shifts to action, takes a turn for the comedic, goes back to horror, then kind of tosses them all in together for the conclusion. More than once I asked "what kind of movie are they trying to make?"

All is not terrible though, thus the average rating. For one the sets and FX are well above par for a low budget cheese fest like this and the actors (while never given a single intelligent thing to do) are lively and energetic; it seems like they at least had fun making the movie.

One could do much better than this, and one could do much worse; it really isn't for anybody as it fails to either excite or irritate.

5/10

Wow, I knew this movie would not be very good, but I thought that maybe there would be something amusing about it. Not so! The sharks are ridiculous looking computer-generated blobs with lots of teeth. You could create a script like this by randomizing cliches such "It's my way or the highway" and "Damned if you do, damned if you don't". There wasn't really a plot, or a point to the movie. I must admit though, the cheese factor is pretty high on this movie. That is why I give it a 2. Yes, the leading lady is kind of hot, but this is a made for TV movie, so it's an empty threat. I like sharks, but the sharks didn't do anything interesting. They were the basis for all of the human interaction, nothing more.

This movie lacks so much of anything needed for a good movie. It lacks a good story, good writing, good special effects, and good acting. The last half hour of the movie has virtually every line ending in the word "NOW". It's just awful.

The gaps in the story are too big to even being to make any logical transition in the film. I can't say that the movie is worth much of your time at all.

There's no wonder that this movie was released straight to video. I was unfortunate enough to have it on a local cable channel. It's so bad that it's almost laughable. As a way to make it enjoyable (should you ever want to see it), rent it with other horrible movies and get a group of friends together and use the time to shout back at the screen.

"We go in on 3, ready... 3,2,1 Go!", is an example of the idiotic dialogue that plagues Dark Waters. Not to mention the scene where our heroes escape and go galavanting around the bridge of a sub on a top-secret mission and manage to convince the officers that they are on a tour. [note: this movie is not a comedy] Dark Waters insults the intelligence of the viewer. What do I know, maybe it IS possible to abandon ship at 5,400 feet. I score Dark Waters a 3, only because the action is plentiful and Simmone Mackinnon is HOT.