User Reviews

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS (THOUGH NOTHING CAN SPOIL THIS FILM MORE THAN ITS ARTLESS EXISTENCE IN THE FIRST PLACE)

Quite possibly the worst film I have ever watched in my 35 years of life, Shark Night 3D beats such classics as Demi Moore's 'Striptease' (barring the one scene that made that bearable, of course). The word derivative does not begin to describe it. The dialogue, plot, acting, effects and general direction is some of the most abysmal I have seen to the point that it seems as if various people involved with the film are competing to do the worst job imaginable. Unlike some reviewers, I don't even think it starts well. It's preposterous from the outset, dribbles through numerous lines of drivel and ends like a wet fart.

I found myself counting how many times something completely unlikely or discontinuous happened but lost count. Some of these lowlights include such things as sharks flying out of the water, sharks swimming just as fast as jet-skis, some bizarrely contrived plot involving a scorned love affair from years ago, the idea that people would pay some hillbillies to watch sharks eat people live on camera in a lake and a truly beyond-hilarious scene in which a one-armed man (whose limb has only just been bitten off in a previous scene) wades out waist-deep into a lake to goad a shark with a cattle-prod: a scene that would have been met with derisory parody way back in the 30s/40s when Tarzan was still wrestling with rubber crocodiles.

In my own humble opinion, however, it is the dialogue-writer who wins the award as it so accurately mirrors the pattern of writing that a slightly autistic 8-year-old boy who has just seen Jaws and some other horror b-movies might adopt. Congratulations to that person!

You would think that the 3D effects might save it as one of those 'so bad it's good and at least we get some comedy deaths and a bit of eye popping horror', right? Wrong. Besides random flying sharks, we get a moment in which mini-sharks eat a woman to death and some of them come at us quickly whilst they do so. This lacks any even mild shock or surprise value nor anything convincing, realistic-looking or genuinely horrific considering how predictable every step of the film is.

Seriously, Shark Night 3D may be rated a '15' but I think the intelligence of your average 15-year-old will be very, very insulted. I only watched this because, as a fan of horror, I wanted to know how bad horror films could be in this day and age. Now I know. They used to use the term 'straight to DVD' to describe bad movies, now it's 'straight to 3D'.

If anyone rates this film highly, it would be a good idea to go check out any other good reviews of theirs as a general guideline for what- not-to-watch.

This movie was predictable and not worth $7.50! It never even showed the shark actually killing anyone! It showed blood and limbs, but no real action.

Piranha 3D was much better!! In this movie, you could always predict who the bad guy was and exactly what was going to happen next. They never really explained where the sharks came from....left some unanswered questions. Katherine McPhee from American Idol did a pretty good job, though! I didn't see it in 3D, but i honestly don't think it would be any better! I hope they don't make a sequel!! Save your money for the remake of The Thing coming out soon!

I saw the opening midnight show last night. At that point there were 2 reviews, both saying how great and gory/bloody it was. That's the films biggest problem, the LACK of gore! I wasn't going to see this film for a great story- I went to see sharks attacking and eating people. All you ever see is someone getting pulled under the water and then some blood (usually very little!) surface, there are no shark attacks on camera. Its a shame because the cast was all good for what it was. It was cheesy and fun, but with each attack (meaning one less kill left of the not to large group) i was disappointed because you Don't SEE AN ATTACK! It's entertaining enough, with a fun cast, but know going into this film that you aren't getting ANY gore, and not too much actual "shark time" on screen. If that's okay with you, then you will enjoy it :) Otherwise wait for the inevitable unrated blu ray.

If you do go- STAY UNTIL THE END OF THE CREDITS!!! If you don't already know whats coming, get ready to laugh and like the cast a little bit more :)

PS The 3D was excellent, especially the underwater shots...

OK, so if you are expecting a movie about what sharks are really like and real shark attacks, this is clearly not a movie to watch. Nor does it have that feel to it like Jaws did that any of this could really happen. I mean the movie is filled with FLYING sharks. The sharks are rather small, only about 10 feet long. No way a shark that small with attack a human in real life unless it's absolutely desperate. And baby sharks only a foot long acting like piranha? Not in real life. But hey, It's nothing compared to the fact that sharks in this movie: have radar, similar to submarines that allows them to track movements above water just as well as under are super intelligent can perform complex geometric and physics computations to plot optimal intercept course if a human (their favorite meal) somehow gets out of the water, just jump out after him as much as 6 feet up and as long as it takes really can swim at 50 miles an hour, for 20 minutes or possibly longer don't really eat but just bite repeatedly if a piece of human, like an arm, is bitten off, it's promptly spat out, so the shark is still hungry and can go after the next victim without pausing. I think if all else fails, the sharks may have been equipped with torpedoes but that's just my theory. But sharks are not the only ones who can perform miracles. A one armed guy who was just unconscious from all the blood loss manages to stab a shark in the water with one hand while been chewed on. Girls in the movie have radar too. They can miraculously locate the direction of the camera which they don't even know is there. Then they turn away from it in unison (and towards a window) take off their tops to put on bikinis.

Anyhow, this is not at all a serious movie. But it's so... so... cheesy that i think I am giving it 6/10 as being kinda a comedy. I mean a little more tweaking and they could make it into a good parody spoof of some bad shark movies.

This movie stars Sara Paxton and Katherine McPhee among other unknown people. The stars are not important. What we have here is a PG-13 shark movie. Something that is so unnatural, I'm surprised that it even exists.

A group of unlikeable college kids go to a lake and get eaten by sharks released by crazy hillbillies. Everyone was unlikeable. Joel David Moore is probably the most likable. He's the most entertaining part of this movie.

Before I saw this movie I was wondering how they were going to pull off the death scenes with a PG-13 rating. As expected, there is a lot of thrashing around in the red coloured water before they are pulled down under. As long as they don't show the blood pouring it's okay. There was a scene when a guy lost his arm and except for the blood on his clothes, there was no bleeding to be seen. I wanted to see some gory shark kills. There was only one cool kill in the whole movie that would have been elevated if this was R- rated.

The 3D in the movie is really only good underwater. Everywhere else it's not used enough to be worth the extra price. Just don't see it in 3D.

This movie is completely predictable from start to finish. After 10 minutes, you learn who the primary characters are and you realize that they will be safe the entire movie. Everyone else except for those characters are fair game for shark attacks. And that's exactly what happens. So any suspense that they try to go for is completely useless. There is no suspense.

The filmmakers took this movie way too seriously. The way to make this movie is like Piranha 3D. Everything is ridiculous and over the top and Piranha 3D embraced that. Shark Night didn't have any fun with it's absurd qualities. Lack of fun is a big problem.

I don't really recommend Shark Night 3D.

September 2, 2011

"Shark Night 3D" is the worst shark picture to come out since "Jaws: The Revenge" sunk audiences back in 1987 and scared them away from going to the theatre to see a shark movie. "Deep Blue Sea" reminded us to stay away and"Piranha 3D" was considerably bad but this picture shows that the shark movies are long outdated and dead in the water. I knew this going to be bad but I didn't think it would be as terrible as it is. This film is just awful in every aspect.

It's about a group of university graduates, Sara (Sara Paxton) and who the hell cares, who drive to Sara's family vacation home on a private lake. When one the kids goes wake-boarding, he is attacked by a shark and loses his arm. Realising the lake is infested with sharks, they attempt to get to the mainland before they become lunch.

That was an easy plot to get through mainly because I don't care about anyone of anything in this picture. Thanks to a faulty PG-13 rating, the gore is reduced and the nudity is cut out. I walk into every film expecting something out of it but I got nothing from this but a headache. I had a hard time trying to figure out what the title of the film means? What the hell is a Shark Night? The 3D aspect is to rip audiences off, even more, most of them paying 12 dollars to see this and we are left with one of the worst films in the last 30 years. I think this might be more stupid than "Jaws: The Revenge." I use it because its fabled for being a terrible film that Universal Pictures road off. It's so easy to compare the films but I think this trash might be more stupid in terms of intelligence.

Do You remember in "Friday the 13th Part III" when the van died and the woman becomes trapped and must fight Jason in the barn? Now in the digital age, cell phones lose service and the characters must find a way out of the situation. In this case, it's driving a boat on the water and hoping they don't become lunch. It's very hard to confuse me with a movie but I had to ask myself the question "how does one get the idea to feed college kids to sharks simply by watching the discovery channel?" While, they try to make sense of that by using the digital age as a backdrop. The moron villains of the film have dumped the sharks into the lake with cameras attached to the bellies in an attempt to show snuff films on the internet. I don't feel bad that I ruined that and I might reveal the end of the picture because this is as close as I hope you get to seeing this film.

None of the characters prevail in any form and are simply shark bait. The screenwriter of the film couldn't have worked very hard to write something decent and his decision to write a screenplay where the film is taken seriously as a slasher film is laughable. I can't begin to believe a major motion picture like this could be greenlit or maybe I can. With the rise of recent 3D movies, it's no surprise that this was conjured up as a means the suck the dollar out of the average moviegoers. Why not, 3D failed to save the "Jaws" series back in 1983 and since 3D is too expensive, post-production 3D is cheaper, hence ripping off audiences more who will pay to see this. Even the 3D to the film is bad. There are two aspects: 3D above the water and 3D under the water. The depth of field under the water is so sharp, it will give you a serious headache.

Sara Paxton is wasted in the film as the one who is supposed to have brains, none of them do, but it's the stupidity of the characters that really took me by surprise. Why would you swim out into shark infested water to retrieve your friends arm after he was just attacked? Furthermore, why would anyone arm themselves with a harpoon and venture into the water to attack the shark that ate your girlfriend? you might get eaten you know. The sharks look worse than anything in this picture. They look absurd and one of them leaps out of the water and attacks someone on a jet-ski. It's worse than it sounds, trust me. By the second act, you know the moron villain, Dennis (Chris Carmack) and Sara have a history together and it will serve as the climax of the film.

If you haven't figured out the ending yet, don't worry because It doesn't matter. I have decided not to ruin the ending, although it's very tempting but with a film as stupid as this, you can figure it out for yourself. When we learn the revelation, it's enough to make you want to get up and leave because we have had a horrible time. As pitiful as this film is, it speaks volumes about Hollywood as well. If they are willing to greenlight a cash grab film such as this, it shows the they are willing to easily rip off the unsuspecting moviegoers and that's about as despicable as this trash film is. Save you hard earned money, you will be thankful.

0/10

Well, in my title for this review I mentioned Deep Blue Sea and Last House on the Left.

As far as I'm concerned this film should of never been made, well it's here and apparently by the ratings on this site it's considered garbage. How could this piece of trash get sent to the theatre, good advertising I'd say.

First of all we start out with the boring usual cocky college kids with the world in the palm if their hands, then we move onto the usual band of country bumpkins that never got over their first crush. This film is telling me that the only reason for this band of misfits and letting sharks into the salt water lake is because of a girl from years ago that he couldn't have sex with? Ney Ney I say to that. Stupid upon stupid. Then we have the so called "Sheriff", blending in with the teenagers that decide to go for a summer getaway at the rich girls house on an island. Well, you'd think the writers would learn this fancy dancy crap doesn't work. It didn't work in Friday the 13th remake, and it doesn't work here. Showing off your richness is so boring, and undermining. Making us all think we have to be rich, is a failure to cinema in itself.

Then we move onto the "Black Guy" who gets his arm bit off. How unintelligent is this? Why are they always stereotyping black people in horror, a bit racist. I'm not even black and I find this racist. How annoying. Then we catch scenes from of Lilly pads growing in the water. Talk about a bad location scout. Lilly pads don't grow in salt water.

Are we just all stupid idiots for watching this crap? Or is it that we are more intelligent in realizing that Hollywood Execs are playing us like we are zombies and have no brains? I agree with the later half.

To sum it all up. There is no reason for these sharks to be were they are, second why do all this shark re-locating? Just to be a sick twisted freak waiting for his first crush to come back? Also if there were that many sharks in the water wouldn't other people have noticed by now, and contacted wild game authorities? Surely somebody must have contacted the authorities after knowing that hundreds of sharks are in their waters. At the beginning of the film we see a girl being attacked, supposedly not noticed. But from the explanation by the local hicks they have been letting "46" species of sharks in the lake. This doesn't add up, if there were that many sharks somebody would have noticed by now considering how fully grown the sharks were. Once again bad writing, I think, I, along with everybody reading this review could come up with a better script. We are much smarter than these hack horror writers. I wouldn't even call them writers, my 8 year old kid could write a better story.

Well I could go on forever of what is wrong with this story, but in the end, to my logic, the actors/actresses were very good, film direction was decent, but the story lacked explanation. At least Deep Blue Sea and Last House on the Left, had meaning and explanation. This film is all over the place.

If I could give it a zero out of ten I would. A waste of my time.

I tend to not review movies when they are in theaters. I think it's better to do so when said movie is on DVD-I dunno why, I just do. So when I saw "Shark Night" in 2011, I knew it would be bad-so bad it ended up in my "worst of the year list", but until now, I've held out on reviewing it. So now that said movie is now available on the home market, let's get this show on the road.

Sara Palski (the adorable Sara Paxton) and her pals Malik (Sinqua Walls), Gordon (Joel David Moore), Beth (former "American Idol" contestant Katherine McPhee), Nick (Dustin Mulligan) Blake (Chris Zykla) and Maya (Alyssa Diaz) go on vacation at a lake house in Louisiana. In the process, then run into redneck goons Dennis (Chris Carmack) and Red ("Blair Witch Project" actor Joshua Leonard, whose found a fine second life in the world of indie and art house movies) and seemingly nice sheriff Greg Sabin (Donal Logue.) The big danger however, is that the fresh water lake has sharks-and that the rednecks might have something to do with them being there.

It's weird to see that David R. Ellis directed this. Here is a man who previously directed "Snakes on a Plane", "Final Destination 2" and the fourth one. Here's a guy who knows how to take a potentially fun concept and run with it (well, not with "The Final Destination", but beggars can't be choosers.) Here however, the movie plays the whole concept straight, with little in the way of personality, humor or thrills. It's a shark movie without any life-one that's so lame, even the folks at The Asylum would raise their noses at it. The whole thing is directed lifelessly, with no potential fun on display. The movie instead goes with one of the biggest cardinal sins in horror-it plays it safe.

Granted, part of that could probably be blamed on the PG-13 rating. It's obvious that the movie is trying to ride the coattails of movies like "Piranha 3D." When you see a movie called "Shark Night", you immediately expect coeds being munched on, female nudity and tons of gore. With a PG-13 rating, it loses much of the impact it could have. Another advantage something like "Piranha" has over this is the fact that it was aware of it's own ridiculousness, and fully embraced it. This is a movie that has potential to be a commentary on reality television with its "Rednecks use sharks to make a bloody web show" sub-plot, but instead it just becomes a morass of bad stereotypes and tiresome torture-horror tropes.

Even more offensive is that much of the cast is actually made up of good actors. I've seen shows and movies where Leonard, Paxton, Moore and Logue (who starred in the sadly short lived FX series "Terriers") have delivered good to great performances. Seeing them in this is just depressing. I know they are better than this, and yes, I'm aware that a job is a job at the end of the day and that actors have to make cash. But it's sad to see the wasted in crap like this.

There is no reason whatsoever to watch "Shark Night", as it has plenty of sharks and no sense of fun. Besides, if you are going to make PG-13 movie with sharks, make it about about a superhero shark, and call it "The Shark Knight."

It's a decent film for a b title 3d shark movie, people just expect soooooo much from so little. It's a low budget 3d shark movie and it surprisingly was a decent movie. 1st the good :Good villains, good sharks, decent story, decent acting, now the bad: not enough gore, lame 3d, unexplained incredibly fast and high jumping sharks. But for a low budget 3d shark movie I was entertained!!

"Shark Night 3-D" bites! Unfortunately, "Snakes on a Plane" director David R. Ellis plays everything straight in "Shark Night 3-D." Meaning, you had better prepare yourself for clichés galore without a smirk in sight. This derivative, PG-13 rated, 91-minute, yarn concerns three stereotypical, mean-spirited rednecks who drool at the chance to feed stuck-up college kids to ravenous sharks of all sizes. Of course, most of the ocean's deadly predators prefer to prowl the briny blue, but these three rednecks have an illegal device that enables them to paralyze these predators, attach mini-cams, relocate them to a Louisiana salt-lake, and then wait for them to start chomping. Furthermore, they plan to make big bucks by selling their shark snuff videos to die-hard "Shark Week" addicts after the real thing. Think of "Shark Night 3-D" as "Jaws" trying to meet "8MM." Everybody sports serious expressions because everything is serious. Nevertheless, everybody behaves like idiots, too. A one-armed college jock with a spear wades into a shark-infested lake with revenge in his heart. Hammerheads, threshers, cookie cutters and bull sharks assemble to make munch-meat of him. Sadly, not only are these sharks either digitally concocted or animatronic, but they also act like SyFy Channel sharks. SyFy Channel made-for-cable movies usually boast sharks that move so quickly they resemble cartoon sharks. The synthetic "Shark Night 3-D" sharks swim with such speed that our heroes, when the latter have either a boat with an outboard motor or water bike at their disposal, cannot leave them in their wake! An academically challenged Tulane University athlete, Malik (Sinqa Walls of "Choose Connor"), makes a B+ on a test and no longer worries about flunking out of college. An ecstatic Malik rewards his dutiful tutor, Nick (Dustin Milligan of "Final Destination 3"), along with Nick's nerdy roommate Gordon (Joel David Moore of "Avatar") to join his friends for a good time at a remote lakeside estate. Sara (Sara Paxton of "Superhero Movie") has wealthy parents who own a beautiful cottage secluded on an island which is surrounded by a sprawling salt-water lake. Naturally, nobody with a cell phone can raise a signal at Lake Crosby. Furthermore, the nearest hospital lies about two hours away. Little do our recreationally minded heroes know the ill-fate which awaits them. Meantime, Malik tries to play Cupid and get Nick and Sara together. As Malik tells Nick, Sara has not been on a date in three years. Later we learn why. Anyway, Nick and Sara grow chummy and Nick winds up steering Sara's launch. While Nick is playing admiral, he has show-off Malik at the end of a tether skiing around the lake on a board. Malik impresses everybody with his incredible gymnastic feats. He loves to perform flips. Suddenly, Malik feels something ram his board, and he takes a tumble. A shark attacks Malik and tears off his right arm at the bicep. Our heroes bandage Malik and rush him to the hospital. Malik's blood drips into the lake and another shark slams into the launch so that Malik's soon-to-be wife, Maya (Alyssa Diaz of TV's "Southland"), topples into the water and gets gobbled up. Later, Malik traipses into the lake with nothing more than his rage and a spear. He kills a hammerhead shark and dies. The two rednecks, Sara's ex-boyfriend, scar-faced Dennis (Chris Carmack of "Into the Blue 2: The Reef), and his tattooed sidekick, Red (Joshua Leonard of "Hatchet"), offer to help Sara and her friends. Beth is so sickened by the tragic turn of events that she wants to ride with Dennis and Red back to the mainland. Gordon refuses to let Beth travel alone with them. Neither realizes the mistake that both make when they set foot on the redneck's boat. Before it is all over with heroic Nick has to tangle with murderous Dennis and a shark.

Basically, "Shark Night 3-D" amounts to a complicated but predictable revenge thriller with nothing to recommend it. Freshmen scenarists Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg neither do Ellis nor the audience any favors with their shallow screenplay that borrows extensively from other shark movies. Their dialogue is utterly flat without any flair. The characters emerge as one-dimensional nitwits waiting for their moment to be eaten. Ellis does deserve some credit for keeping the action moving at a brisk headlong pace. Nevertheless, he fails to generate any sympathy for our clueless heroes. The villains could be cousins of the rednecks in "Deliverance." All of the ersatz shark attacks have been lensed before with greater realism in better movies. The 3-D technology delivers in only two scenes. The first involves an exploding boat hurling shrapnel, while the second shows a shark as its gory innards are blasted out of it. Considering the $28-million budget, you'd think they could have made more than one shark appear convincing. A bull shark does look supremely menacing in a scene straight out of the James Bond feature "License to Kill," but the rest look simulated and swim like torpedoes. Two sharks literally defy gravity by leaping out of the lake to chomp. A first girl caught alone in the lake is straight out of the original "Jaws" as well as the attack on a hapless skier is straight out of the "Jaws 2." If you want to watch a good shark thriller, and you cannot find "Jaws," then you might try "Deep Blue Sea" (1999), or the straight-to-video, outlandish "Shark Attack 3: Megalodon" (2002) and "Shark Swarm" (2008). The PG-13 rating rules out any chance of nudity, and the ability of sharks that can race through the water after speedboats eliminates any sense of credibility. Ellis generates a modicum of suspense when swimmers struggle to out-swim the sharks, but not enough to scare the daylights out of you.

"Shark Night 3-D" is munch-ado-about-gnaw-thing!

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***