Maneater

Expect stupid characters, expect harmful effects, expect laughably stupid moments, and expect them to do dumb stuff. Maneater (2022) is another example of bad shark movies that go to on demand or just straight to digital.

The characters are of course idiots and make dumb decisions, also the acting is standard. The acting is bad, and it has bad lines of dialogue, but the acting is still boring to watch.

The plot of the movie is the same as other bad straight to digital shark movies, having people do an activity on or around the water, a shark attacks, and they must survive. Which is just repetitive to watch.

The shark has bad CGI and clearly looks fake. Especially whenever the shark attacks and you cannot tell what is happening all you see is blood and bubbles for a couple minutes, while also having the movie feel slow for no reason.

I do not recommend watching this, if you want a good shark movie to watch then watch Jaws (1975) or The Shallows (2016) they will give a better movie experience.

It doesn't get much more unrealistic than this movie. There were absolutely no attempts made to make the shark and shark attacks look real, and one of the main characters blatantly flirts with a taken man right in front of his significant other. This is essentially a cheesy slasher film with a shark replacing a human serial killer. At one point, just like in your typical horror movie, two people go off alone for obviously scandalous reasons and somehow their friends don't notice they're missing right away. And of course one of these people were explicitly told not to go in the water, but of course they do.

Well, truth be told, I must admit that I was lured into watching the 2022 movie "Maneater" on three accounts. The first being that this was a shark movie; I do like shark movies, despite most of them being dubious. Secondly, the movie's cover looked interesting. And thirdly, this was a movie that I hadn't already seen.

Granted, I wasn't really harboring much of any high hopes for this shark movie from writer and director Justin Lee, as the majority of the shark movies out there tend to have overly dramatic and cool-looking covers, but the contents of the movie itself is rubbish. But I opted to give "Maneater" the benefit of the doubt.

Sure "Maneater" was watchable, but it was a rather generic shark movie, for better or worse. I mean, it could have been a worse movie experience, as many of the shark movies out there tend to be, but luckily writer and director Justin Lee managed to put together something that was enjoyable enough for what it turned out to be. Sure, you're not in a for a new "Jaws" movie here, but it was a fair enough attempt at a shark movie.

The acting performances in the movie were adequate, but of course for a movie such as "Maneater", then you know you're not in for award-winning movie performances. I was only familiar with Trace Adkins and Jeff Fahey in this movie.

Visually then "Maneater" was okay. Some of the shark scenes were quite good, while others had some rather questionable CGI animation going on. But all in all, the effects in "Maneater" were fair enough to carry the movie.

If you enjoy shark movies, then "Maneater" could be worth your time. I enjoyed it adequately enough.

My rating of "Maneater" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Was this a movie, or a cinematic music video?

The music was TOO LOUD! I couldn't hear a word the actors were saying, because all I could hear was some Mariah Carey wannabe, belting out vocals loud enough to wake the dead!

Even when there was no singing, the music in the background was unbelievably loud, drowning out everything.

For obvious reasons, turning the volume up made it worse. I couldn't get passed the 10-minute mark for this exact reason. I don't feel too bad though, as the film looked gash anyway...and after reading reviews on here, it's clear I dodged a bullet!

In summary: THE. MUSIC. WAS. TOO. LOUD.

I have seen quite a lot of sharkmovies. Some of which were really bad. This one was beyond bad. Sure when starting to watch this movie I didn't expect much of it, however it was even worse. It is not the acting, or casting, which ain't good, but those neednt to be good in these kind of movies. It is the plot and script writing which are terrible and the direction isn't any better. People hardly feel fear, anger or sadness. Without any ruining spoilers it is safe to say that in these kind of movies people die. However it looked like nobody cared. People getting over a loss in a few days or even hours. Furthermore it seems like the filming location took all the budget, since the shark attacks were not shown. The shark itself is probably a Bruce ordered at Wish or Temu. Why 3 stars instead of 2 or even one? Well a good sharkmovie should either be thrilling and score high (Jaws), either be mediocre but at least has some action in it (the Meg) or superbad that is fun to watch (sharknado). This was none of these.