Dark Waters

This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a while. I have to confess, I fast forwarded through most of it, because it was far too stupid and low-budget to waste any time on. A navy experiment with sharks has gone awry, and a group of ferocious sharks is now threatening to make the viewer nervous. However, these CGI sharks are so phony looking, along with the sets and other effects, that one will have to watch some other movie for thrills. So little production value was added to this flick that one actor, who is supposedly eaten by a shark in one scene, re-appears 10 minutes later with a mustache on his face as a different character. I'm writing this review to take my revenge on the producers of this film. It is not a "so-bad-it's-good" movie, it's too bad for human eyes to watch.

Dark Waters: One of a large number of cheapo Sci-Fi action films. Most usually related to creatures from the deep. Dark Waters is essentially a low budget equivalent to Deep Blue Sea. Starring in this is DTV maestro Sir Lorenzo of the Lamas's. Lorenzo is a legend it has to be said. From a promising earlier career including the hit TV show Falcon Crest he has through the years become a reliable action man for hire, known more for his perfectly conditioned hair than for the fact he's in excellent physical shape and is a black belt. The thing with Lorenzo is, that there are always signs he's not too bad an actor, as far as these movies go. He did after all get a Golden Globe nomination over 20 years ago. The thing is without any inspiration from the material he can seem bored and lacking in charisma. Here though Lorenzo seems more in his element compared to some of his other recent cheapies. Dark Waters has a kind of enjoyable B-movie feel to it. The movie is an effects movie, there is a lot of CGI and considering it's from the bargain basement of CGI effects they aren't to bad. Nowadays you can get fair CGI for very little money thanks to the development in the technologies. This film is obviously shot on ultra low budget but there are enough quickly constructed sets and acceptable CGI shots to give some sense of scale. Of course the movie has it's fair share of dud computer shots.

In Dark Waters Lorenzo plays a marine biologist whose recklessness through the years has caused his research lab to have been shut down and causing severe problems in his pursuit of Atlantis. Now he and his equally morally oblique lady friend, played by Simmone Mackinnnon are fraudsters who try and extort money from wealthy people in order to fund their expeditions. Lorenzo seems at home playing a sleazy gigolo it has to be said and the role is given plenty of humour. Lorenzo and Simmone have a good chemistry and seem to be having fun with it.

Overall this film is reasonably enjoyable and director Phillip Roth is a specialist in doing ambitious effects laden projects for minimal money, for example APEX and the fairly enjoyable Velocity Trap. He certainly has gained an understanding of using effects and is competent in the action scenes. This is, despite it's ludicrous premise and swift and harmless watch. **

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.

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