90210 Shark Attack

Arriving for an assignment in Beverly Hills, a research class looking into the environmental damage done to the local marine life, but when there starts to be revelations about the true intent behind the trip a special connection to a mystical shark arrives to sort out those with ulterior motives.

This was a decent if decidedly flawed genre effort. One of the better aspects involved here is the setup involving the class coming there to the area to come across the shark. As this brings about several different interlocking elements that give all of the class a reason to be there, from the devious teacher looking for book material on the girl who's there trying to get over her father's tragedy and the different needs of the students who are trying out their objectives on the trip, this starts with a decent enough start that segues nicely into the shark attacks. Featuring the fine connection to the shark's appearance through her necklace, this is all quite enjoyable and makes for a decent first half. This connection with the necklace and how the shark appears causes many of the sudden shark appearances to come forward. The idea of it appearing out of the blue from within the necklace whenever she's aroused or excited causes some enjoyably cheesy moments where it comes out to attack, chomping on the skeevy assistant trying to get out of the trip, the attack on the boyfriend who wants to get with her or the later scene with the remaining couples who are left. Since this also plays around with her growing enjoyment over the power and becomes quite devious taking out those who are tormenting her, there are a few enjoyable aspects to be had with the film. This one does have some issues with it. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome is the somewhat unnecessary padding that goes on here which is always obvious about what's being done for this extra running time. The overlong scenes of the girl ogling the guy she has an unrequited crush on as he takes a swim in the pol, the constant pans around the house to take in the environment or the numerous side-stories about the class hanging out at the house which takes up nearly the entire first hour to this one. Each of these takes up way too much time before actually getting to the actual horror elements in the story that it's insanely obvious these are dragging the film out to a longer running time. The other aspect that holds it back is the fact that there's not a whole lot of actual shark action which comes about due to these factors as well as other issues. The time-padding doesn't leave this much chance to work with much in terms of chances to let a shark loose, but that all of this is spent on land with the shark appearing as a mystical being out of the necklace with no gore or bloodshed at all leaves such a sour taste in the first place that it can feel like an absolute cheat to even lump this into the genre with the first appearance nearly halfway through the film. Combined with the cheap look and overall underwhelming CGI that looks off, these are what hold this one back overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Mild Violence.

The DVD cover for 90210 Shark Attack is pretty cool, but that's the only compliment that I can give to this movie.

A group of college students rooms in a posh Beverly Hills mansion while they're going to be studying oceanography. One of the students fathers owns the mansion where they are staying. You've got all the typical stereotypes that are common to these kinds of films.

One of the students boasts a very bizarre secret. She is the daughter of a well known oceanographer who has disappeared and is presumed to be dead. There's the nerdy type of teacher's pet, whose in love with her. There's the typical snotty jock type too! 90210 Shark Attack is a Syfy channel level of movie. The DVD boasts being an unrated director's cut. There's nothing in this to be "unrated". I would advise that you pass on 90210 Shark Attack. I can't recommend anything about it.

This movie essentially begins with six college students arriving at a summer house on the beach in preparation for a field trip involving marine anthropology. The class is led by a teacher named "Pamela" (Donna Wilkes) who has her hands full trying to keep all of the students in line. For starters, two students by the names of "Bryce" (Braden Bacha) and "Marcie" (Nikki BreAnne Wells) can't seem to keep their hands off of each other or their libidos in check for any length of time. On the other hand, Pamela has a secret sexual affair with one of the other students while at the same time a totally different interest in another student by the name of "Alyssa" (Stephanie Shemanski). But Pamela isn't the only one harboring a secret. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that this has to be one of the worst films I have seen in quite a while. The acting was bad but admittedly it was made even worse by the extremely weak script and poor direction which kept showing similar scenes repeatedly. For example, for some odd reason the director (David DeCoteau) seemed extremely focused and devoted to the semi-nude physique of one of the male actors to the exclusion of the two sexy actresses on-hand and available (Nikki BreAnne Wells and Stephanie Shemanski). Very odd indeed. But regardless of that fact, he definitely needed to spend more time on the script and acting as both were clearly in need of considerable improvement. In any case, this movie is really, really bad and other than the presence of the two actresses I just mentioned I don't see any reason to recommend it to anybody.

People may get defensive reading this, saying "why watch it anyway", "this is not a film to be taken seriously" and "you should know what to expect before watching", like at least one person annoyingly says for many panned low-budget films. Saw '90210 Shark Attack' out of curiosity, to see whether it was that awful and hoping for some guilty pleasure fun. Knowing exactly what to expect, having seen my fair share of shark films (the odd one being a mild guilty pleasure but most struggle to rise mediocre level).

Am aware that this kind of film is not to be taken seriously (that is the case with a vast majority of shark films in existence), the title '90210 Shark Attack' and the absurd premise alone give that away. Knew that it was a film that wouldn't win awards for great production values or writing and would be very cheesy. Was not expecting something though that would be so intelligence-insultingly awful in every single way, with absolutely no fun, tension or heart. Actually felt that my IQ had been decreased by several notches after watching and that is not a nice thing to feel.

'90210 Shark Attack' looks amateurish and ridiculously fake. Especially bad is the repetitive, almost all of the time for no reason, editing, and there is far too much stock footage of sharks lacking any kind of menace or even doing an awful lot, again mostly pointless. It was impossible to detect any kind of direction, if there was any, despite it shockingly not being the case, it honestly came over as a director completely and utterly lacking in experience. The soundtrack throughout the entirety of '90210 Shark Attack' was completely misplaced and placed so inappropriately, on its own it sounds cheap and at least 25 years out of date.

The script sounded made up on the spot and the cheese and awkwardness goes into complete overkill, that it becomes exhausting. The story is as indescipherable as the direction, even more so, with far too many gratuitous close up shots of torsos, a worse than lethargic pace and no tension or suspense whatsoever.

None of the characters are remotely interesting, let alone likeable. When they had any kind of discernible personality they were truly obnoxious. There are three elements especially that come over as non-existent, one was the direction, one was the story and the other is the worse-than-high-school-play level of acting.

Summarising, am really shocked that even, when trying to take it for what it was and trying to be, something this appalling was made. 1/10 (and that is being generous)

Are there naked girls in this movie? No.

Are there girls in bikinis in this movie? No.

Are there fun kills in this movie? No.

Is there a shark in this movie? No.

Is the acting good? No.

Is the writing good? No.

There's simply nothing worthwhile about this movie, unless you enjoy topless men. If you do, you might at least enjoy a shower scene. There's a fair amount of beefcake for you to enjoy.

Outside of that, there is absolutely nothing to recommend this movie.

1/10.

Here's forty-ish characters of filler..

Scale: 1-3: Don't waste your time.

4-6: Good.

7-9: Great.

10: Outstanding.