Can I call this film “Shark Night 3D” if I saw it in 2D during the daytime? Fuck it. As some of you guys who might know me even a little bit could tell you, I’m typically not a fan of movies that vilify animals, especially awesome animals. Okay okay, Jaws is one of the best movies ever, but that’s based more on the paranoia and fear of the town with an unknown invader and the conversations between Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. Point being, despite not typically liking creature features based on real, unwilling animals, there can be exceptions to that rule. As much shit as I talked about this movie, considering it was a B-movie plot with a PG-13 rating, the fact that it was directed by David R. Ellis, the man who brought us Snakes on a Plane and Cellular, and riding my fondness for Sara Paxton‘s character in The Innkeepers, I decided to give it a shot. Oh yeah, and I was bored as shit.

With all this shark terror going on, it was a wise decision to “cover up”.

Similar to the opening of Jaws, the opening scene of this movie involves a lady allowing her boyfriend to take her top off (don’t get excited, it’s only PG-13), and when he thinks she’s fooling around, she gets eaten by a shark. We’re then introduced to a hodgepodge of college-aged characters who are about to celebrate spring break or finals or they won a frisbee tournament or something, it doesn’t really matter. The way they choose to celebrate being attractive college kids is by going to Sara’s (Sara Paxton) family lake house in Louisiana. While wakeboarding, one guy gets him arm bitten off by a shark. Oh no! The rest of the gang need to contact the authorities to try to save the arm, but while using their boat, it fucks up on them and explodes. Two local rednecks offer their services, but that’s when we learn that these rednecks are the ones who put the sharks in the lake, as well as having rigged the sharks with cameras, so that way people are getting eaten and it’s all being filmed. Assholes. Even the sheriff is in on the whole thing! All the college kids get killed, except for Sara and athletic yet intelligent male counterpart, who are able to kill the rednecks and the sheriff. Our heroes make it out alive, as well as a dog, until at the very last moment, we see a great white shark jump out of the water at the camera! I bet THAT was cool to see in 3D!

Anyone feel like explaining to me how great white sharks were able to osmoregulate in order to survive in fresh water? ANYONE?

Let’s start off with the things I like, of which there were three. First, Sara Paxton was in it. Second, there was a point where one of the redneck characters said there were nearly 350 species of sharks, which would be correct. Third, the first time we see a shark attack, one character comments on it looking like a bull shark, which would make sense, considering they are the only species of shark known to travel into freshwater and can adapt to living in it. The things I didn’t like were everything else going on. There were hammerhead sharks and great whites, WHICH COULDN’T HAVE FUCKING SURVIVED. Had they chose to ONLY use bull sharks, I wouldn’t have been as angry, but why would you go through the effort of doing a tiny amount of research, like with how many sharks there are, and realize there is a reason why sharks live in the ocean? Did I mention this was PG-13? It was like if you had taken Piranha 3D and cut out all of the gore and boobs to be able to show it on TV. Donal Logue played the sheriff and Joel David Moore played one of the coeds, and that was kind of entertaining, but those guys weren’t used nearly enough to make it a funnier movie. Also, the excuse for why this was happening was because of Donal Logue’s statistics on how many people watch “Shark Week” every year. THAT’S THE REASON THEY’RE DOING THIS…IT’S BECAUSE OF FUCKING SHARK WEEK. Even had this movie been rated R and had they stuck to only bull sharks, it still would have been a poor knock off of Piranha 3D, and still would have been too little, too late. I recommend checking out Cellular though because THAT movie is hilariously terrible. Oh yeah, and that skinny guy from The Blair Witch Project isn’t skinny anymore, in case you were wondering.

Wolfman Moon Scale