"I think the audience will respond to the story because we're not just giving them sharks and/or aliens, but we're actually bringing together what has previously been two different and distinct genres."
Shark movies are the cat's pajamas. Whether they're the good ones (Jaws) or the bad ones (all the rest of 'em), there's just something so rockin' about seeing the same stock footage from Discovery Channel being utilized in every single direct-to-video shark movie. Now, this time, we have a real treat: stock footage of Corbin Bernsen, looking gnarled, and ending every scene he is in with holding onto submarine innards and looking pensive.
The movie's "plot" is as this: Corin Nemec, who is basically Eric Stoltz, but far less talented, works on an underwater observational laboratory, the Oshona (Get it? Ocean?!). He shaves everything on his face except his neck. He is married to Vanessa Angel, who has seen better days. Together, they deal with Alien goo that falls from space and lands in the ocean (crashing through a ship, of course, for some neat funky explosions). The sharks near the goo become RAGING and attack people near and far, because GOD, alien goo just DOES THAT TO SHARKS. Sometimes the sharks are plastic heads, sometimes it's stock footage, but it's always brilliant, even when the stock footage shows the shark swimming just below the water line, despite the fact the action is supposed to take place several hundred feet under water.
Then, a random smarmy lawyer man shows up, and is smarmy, and gives our Eric Stoltz look-alike lead grief. Eric Stoltz dopple-ganger and Vanessa Angel look at goo together. Vanessa Angel delivers a line twice, in the same exact way, one right after the other. ("Find out what it is, OK?" X2). Eric Stoltz's hairy-necked twin calls for Matt, the scientist, who is in an unseen upstairs room, and who is also already in the process of entering the scene as he very flatly says, "Coming Mike."
Smarmy man turns out to be evil smarmy man and is then killed (sort of) by a harpoon gun, which is apparently an essential tool in an underwater sea lab. The cast is filled out with bad American actors and some bad Russian (er, Bulgarian) actors. From time to time, sharks swim around, just to let you know they're there. Whether it's computer-multiplied shark footage or hilariously fake looking wobble fins covered in shoddy carve nicks, the sharks are there in all of their brilliant and artificial glory.
There are some profound lines delivered throughout the movie, such as:
"The Bermuda Triangle--don't they know how many ships have gone down here?"
"You idiots stumbled across it and triggered a beacon that shot into outer space."
and
--"Have you tried saturating it with deuterium?"
--"Deuterium? No... Deuteriummmm......Of course!!"
During the movie, there is a shark autopsy performed. Inside the mouth of the shark sits an obvious tongue, which sharks do not in any way possess. But, then again, these RAGING sharks rewrite the big book of sharks that these filmmakers obviously failed to read.
The film ends as brilliantly as it begins. ALERT explodes on the lab's computer screens with the same authenticity of a screen saver as explosions begin for no apparent reason. Said aliens from the movie's intro beam down to the wreckage containing the goo while the Oshona sits with no power or oxygen, due to said unexplained explosions that have crippled the lab. Aliens sit there, relishing in their beam of space light, and look around, all the while set to the soothing Operatic film score that totally does not belong anywhere near this movie.
As the trapped-inside-the-Oshona-lab scientist couple take their last breath, the aliens begin glowing so bright that orange light fills the screen.
CUT TO:
The couple, in full out scuba gear, SWIMMING AWAY FROM THE OSHONA. How did that happen? You'll be on the edge of your seat, waiting for the explanation that never comes. Also swimming away is the evil smarmy man who was clearly killed with a harpoon gun earlier in the film. Despite the giant harpoon in him, and the aliens who sit idly by, and being several hundred feet under water and DROWNING, he still deems it necessary to attempt to kill Eric Stoltz's wimpy little brother and Vanessa Angel. But don't worry; he's instantly shoved in the plastic mouth of a plastic shark, and screams.
Does this movie suck? Yes. It does. A lot.
Did I love it? Yes. I did. A lot.
I'd recommend watching the Behind the Scenes featurette, because you'll get to see everyone say with a straight face how good the movie is and why the audience will love it. You'll also see one of the actors boast about his background in karate and how he did all his own stunts.
'Sides, anyone who actually rents a movie called "Raging Sharks" deserves to be disappointed.
