Pânico no Mar

In the wake of the surprise success "Deep Blue Sea" (1999), which is still well worth seeing, this less ambitious follow-up was made in inexpensive Bulgaria.

Antonio Sabato Jr. Goes on the hunt for the legendary ancient shark Megalodon with a motley crew. The young, dynamic marine researcher (Sabato Jr. With long hair like the ones nerds wore at the turn of the millennium) carries a traumatic childhood experience with him and, despite all the difficulties, can now face the final battle with the monstrous primal fish .

As a former underwear model, Antonio Sabato Jr. Of course, he sometimes takes off his shirt and shows off his abdominal muscles, but he doesn't achieve the charisma of his father Antonio Sabato (GOLDEN GLOBE nomination in 1967 for GRAND PRIX).

The megalodon has more charisma, as it can bare its teeth in a fearsome manner. The rest of the crew consists of Christian Toulali, Grand L. Bush and the very blonde Heather Marie Marsden, none of whom rise above stereotypical portrayals.

You can watch it if you like shark horror!

Having switched over to late night Sky Movies, I thought this was just going to be another rubbishy clone movie that I could switch my brain off to, then it turned out to be the completely opposite. The tense bits were tense, the special effects were very good for a "hmm, never saw 'that' one at the movies" movie, and the acting was OK. My only complaints with it were plot wise, the crew seemed to very quickly jump into plan to capture a giant monster that none of them believed existed in the first place, and the investigation of the research centre to which they were sent to 'investigate', encompassed nothing more than cursory glance and the extraction of a Shark tooth from the side of a wall. The ending was also a bit, well... unsatisfactory. Other than that, it held my attention and is a very worthy "Aaah, giant Shark" movie.

I saw this in the video store, placed right next to "Shark Attack III," which also deals with a Megalodon. I'm a big fan of Megs, having read Steve Alten's book "Meg" and the sequel. Although I had read the horrible reviews on Shark Attack II and seen the first Shark Attack movie, and imagined it would be as god awful as those. I was actually pretty surprised. Despite Antonio Sabato Jr in the lead role, the acting was fairly decent for this type of movie. The special effects were very well done, and the shark was very realistic, along with the sub. The plot was pretty typical of some of the TBS-made movies you see a lot of, but I rented it more for the action.

I had read some decent reviews of this movie and decided to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised. The scenes with the shark were realistic and there was a lot of action. The ending to the film could have been more upbeat, but overall it was fairly entertaining.

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.

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