Shark Hunter

The better of the giant Shark films. Compared to Megalodon (2002) and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002), Shark Hunter is almost Oscar material when it comes to acting and script. Although it suffers with a low budget and shamelessly borrows elements from Steve Alten's novel 'Meg' it's the closet thing you'll get to an attempted prehistoric shark film.

The pacing and editing are a little awry but some of the practical and special effects are well executed.

Die Hard actor Grand L. Bush and hammy Antonio Sabato Jr. for the most part are watchable. Director Matt Codd is wise to hide to shark in the shadows and considering it was made in 2001 the SPFX are adequate. The music score is worthy of note and it has a nihilistic element that breaks the b-film mould with and ending that refreshingly going against the norm.

Overall, it's far from great but the best Megalodon film to date.

I got to see Antonio Sabato, Jr. fresh from his appearance at the Republican convention in this film. It should better be titled Shark Destroyer because that's the mission Sabato is on.

You can't really blame him, this prehistoric sixty foot Megladon survivor took his parents from him. Since then Sabato has become an oceanographer, but all that was training the subduing of his particular white whale.

After another couple of incidents where this big guy did some serious damage, the last incident to an underwater laboratory, Sabato gets assigned to a submarine where the people there are divided between capturing and killing the big shark. Of course Sabato wants to kill it, but Heather Marie Marsden wants to take it alive.

This is a plot we've seen a lot of, most especially in the first version of The Thing. Marsden also a scientist sounds a whole lot like scientist Robert Cornthwaite from that much better film.

Think of Moby Dick when you see this. With the script most definitely not written by Herman Melville.

Low budget movie about a giant shark. It really seems that Spielberg's JAWS (1975) made quite an impression on the world. SHARK HUNTER is just another film from an entire genre in the shadow of JAWS. Antonio Sabato Jr. stars as some sort of marine biologist hell bent on proving that his parents were killed by a prehistoric megalodon shark. Next thing you know he's at the bottom of the ocean with an experimental navy sub (crew included) fighting the twenty ton shark. Blah blah blah and loopholes so big, the shark could swim through them. However, no one is watching this type of movie for the story line...or even the acting. You are watching it for the killer shark.

Every scene of this film with the sixty-foot long shark is computer-generated and it looks like the movie's budget went into these effects. And it surprisingly pays off. They did a pretty damn good job. The CG shots look better than the majority of scenes with CG sharks in Renny Harlin's DEEP BLUE SEA (1999).

The only disappointment for me in this film were the shark attacks. The shark is so big that it can easily swallow a mini-sub (as shown in the movie). My point is that the shark is to big to attack people.

The highlight of SHARK HUNTER, for me, was the ending. It took me by surprise...really unexpected.

In conclusion, this is a really bad movie. However, if you love killer shark movies and have seen JAWS one too many times, this one's for you.

Luckily, I saw this movie on the Sci-Fi channel and didn't waste money renting it. Yes, it was pretty bad.

Lets begin: Antonio Sabato Jr. plays Dr. Spencer Northcut, a professor and quite possibly the only human on the planet who can design every facet of a deep sea research submarine (subtle sarcasm there, folks), who's family was attacked by a shark called a Megaladon that became extinct over 40 million years ago. The problem is that Dr. Northcut cannot seem to get a berth on the very sub that he created, maybe because of his obsession to get even with the monster shark that took his parents from him, or maybe because he's just not qualified for a position on the sub (did you ever think about THAT, Northcut?), and he spends the first fifteen minutes of the movie pouting about it. Then, as if a sign from above, a research facility is destroyed and it's Northcut to the rescue. Why he would suddenly become qualified to help investigate the destroyed facility is beyond me but he finally gets a berth on "his sub". As the story rolls along we also find out that Northcut is a qualified diver, paleontologist, submarine commander, mini-sub driver and martyr extraordinaire. Wow, can this guy do it all or what?

The other characters were almost as bad, not to mention most of the acting. Whomever casted Heather Marie Marsden (in a laughable performance) should seriously think about another career and the diction coach should have been fired. I don't have a problem with foreign actors but if they're going to use American slang at least do it properly. Example: One of the guys in the research facility tells another guy, "I sick of your stupid-ass games" but the way he said it, it sounded like, "I'm sick of your stupid ASS games." I've been trying to figure out what those are ever since. The only character I liked was Harrington, a no-nonsense mini-sub driver that thinks Northcut is an unqualified nut that could endanger the entire crew. Grand L. Bush's portrayal of Harrington was the most realistic of all the characters and the only one who questions Northcut's qualifications...finally.

The animation was also atrocious. Whose idea was it to make the shark look like it was snarling? I almost expected to hear it growling! And don't forget to check out the radar display. At one point there is a large, green shape of a shark coming across the screen! If anyone has ever seen an actual radar screen (and I use one on my boat) they'll know that images are just big blots of color and not distinguishable from one another: could be land, could be a boat or it could be a channel marker. Radar's do not decipher what's in front of you, so the image of a shark floating by was pretty funny indeed!

If I have to describe this movie in one word it would be "Pffflllttt" (big fat raspberry).

Compared to other shark/creature movies I've seen over the past few weeks, Shark Hunter is surprisingly not bad. It is nothing great though, with an awful script which is full of stilted and cheesy lines, parts where editing lacks focus, sluggish pacing, a hammy performance from Antonio Sabbato and a story which while good in concept and having some decent moments is overly-silly. However, the underwater sequences are surprisingly well-shot with CGI that is not as cheap as it could have been, scenes that actually do have more suspense and tension and less predictability such as the ending the shark is adequately menacing(already an improvement on the sharks from the SyFy creature movies and the last two Jaws sequels) and Grand L.Bush is decent and likable.

Overall, not a great movie, but watchable especially compared to what it could have been. 5/10 Bethany Cox