Anthony Ferrante is now left to direct small scale shark movies in the aftermath of his Sharknado films becoming both the summit and pit of such things. That was all awhile ago now. Those films had larger and larger budgets and probably helped crasht the Science Fiction channelas they finally stopping making their lousy CGI ANIMAL attack movies. The fact that is over is something to be thankful for, but sadly Ferrante was unable to escape from the cheap but still clutching at him movie produced by The Asylum, a company that pays so little the State of California Labor board was actually after them for awhile.
In this one a too skinny girl and her too handsome boyfriend encounter a too much like BIlly Zane in Dead calm guy, rather well acted by Francisco Angelini. It'd be nice to see him have a real career, his take on the "Indianapolis" speech--if you dont' know what that is then you've never watched a shark movie before--is well done, though somewhat ruined by a sudden need, by the director, to shake the camera around, perhaps thinking this is the Blair Witch confessional/goodbye cruel work, mom I loved you, moment from that film. Hard to keep the iconic rip off moments straight I guess.
A couple of the cgi shark shots look okay, none of the shark attacks are convincing or scary or exciting. Some nice drone shots, which could be stock footage but probably aren't. A choppy ineffective music score credited to three people--probably just reused music from other Asylum produced movies.
It takes them 53 minutes to figure out they can use a cell phone to call for help and that's the least of the logic problems in the movie.
The movie is bits of other shark movies and basically runs out of ideas about an hour in so the lead gal then becomes more of less blind and we get back to a kind of Dead Calm plot for a bit. There are a numbe of soft focus shots supposed to be the point of view of our hapless lead gal, but none of them match what would be her natural perspective, the point of view shots aren't her actual point of view, though they often try to be. Someone kicks her and is aiming way off camera, this type of thing happens over and over.
It's just after so many years and so many shark movies you'd think Ferrante would have it down to an art or at least a craft, then again these are now made for so little money is so little time maybe there just isn't any art or craft that can escape. Ferrante is left to try to do what he can in the remains of Asyulm the production company. Too bad for him, but as viewers we can look elsewhere in this case.
This film is better than SWIM which Ferrante just wrote, to be even more terribly directed by Jared Cohnhead. Swim I believe was the first movie to bear the shame of the TUBI ORIGINAL brand, one we can only hope leaves behind what was done to death and badly a few years ago to do some films that can be more like Tubi's wide ranging titles. To be clear I like Tubi as a streaming network and I hope for better from this ORIGINAL BRAND, but I've not gotten it yet.
I suppose this film could be a drinking game with every time a character yells, "Faster." or "Swim," of or course "Shark."
