I never wrote a review until now, but "Shark Night 3D" inspired me to do so.
Let me tell you something, up until the third act, the film starts out pretty decent. Like "Piranha 3D", which it tries to be, it opens up with someone getting killed, then opens up to an upbeat tune. It starts out funny, with Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Katherine McPhee (though I liked her better in "The House Bunny"), and Chris Zylka (soon to be seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man" as Flash Thompson) handing in charismatic performances.
The second act comes where the comedy takes a nosedive for the horror to come around. Aside from a nicely acted monologue from Paxton where her character recounts a life-affecting tragedy, director David R. Ellis (who you may remember also directed a similar tongue-in-cheek film, "Snakes on a Plane"), fumbles the ball when trying to jerk out tears. Especially when Malik (Sinqua Walls) explodes into a crying fit about losing his girlfriend (it's not the levels of Tyler Perry's soap opera casserole, but it doesn't register) before going out to fight a shark.
*SPOILER ALERT* But what drove the film right into the ground was the fact that the titular villains - the sharks - were almost background noise to the real villains: a redneck trio (Donal Logue, Joshua Leonard, and Chris Carmack) who use the sharks for their reality show. Believe it or not, this is an original idea, and it could've worked wonders. However, Ellis envisions the bloodthirsty madmen as... well, bloodthirsty madmen. It's done in such a borderline cartoonish way, making them over-the-top, mustache-twirling villains, and Ellis seems to take delight into pushing the envelope of their insane ways, even to a point where the main characters become background noise like the sharks. And hearing why one of the characters went into this profession is another clichéd revenge ploy. This concoction takes the joy away from the film, and it becomes bad torture porn.
***END SPOILER***
Let me tell you something, up until the third act, the film starts out pretty decent. Like "Piranha 3D", which it tries to be, it opens up with someone getting killed, then opens up to an upbeat tune. It starts out funny, with Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Katherine McPhee (though I liked her better in "The House Bunny"), and Chris Zylka (soon to be seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man" as Flash Thompson) handing in charismatic performances.
The second act comes where the comedy takes a nosedive for the horror to come around. Aside from a nicely acted monologue from Paxton where her character recounts a life-affecting tragedy, director David R. Ellis (who you may remember also directed a similar tongue-in-cheek film, "Snakes on a Plane"), fumbles the ball when trying to jerk out tears. Especially when Malik (Sinqua Walls) explodes into a crying fit about losing his girlfriend (it's not the levels of Tyler Perry's soap opera casserole, but it doesn't register) before going out to fight a shark.
*SPOILER ALERT* But what drove the film right into the ground was the fact that the titular villains - the sharks - were almost background noise to the real villains: a redneck trio (Donal Logue, Joshua Leonard, and Chris Carmack) who use the sharks for their reality show. Believe it or not, this is an original idea, and it could've worked wonders. However, Ellis envisions the bloodthirsty madmen as... well, bloodthirsty madmen. It's done in such a borderline cartoonish way, making them over-the-top, mustache-twirling villains, and Ellis seems to take delight into pushing the envelope of their insane ways, even to a point where the main characters become background noise like the sharks. And hearing why one of the characters went into this profession is another clichéd revenge ploy. This concoction takes the joy away from the film, and it becomes bad torture porn.
***END SPOILER***