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Friday, 21 September 2012

Jurassic Shark- It's a bit rubbish

 When an oil company drills into a pocket of ice trapped in the rock they inadvertently release a prehistoric shark into a Canadian lake.
 Soon after a gaggle of college girls find themselves trapped on an island with a gang of armed art-thieves and a hungry shark stooging about offshore.

  The DVD cover is a lot better than this film deserves, frankly.
 In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that it cost more to produce the DVD artwork than it did to produce the film because while that cover you're looking at is a halfway-decent professional job, "Jurassic Shark" is strictly amateur league in every single respect.
 To begin with, the shark is specifically described as a Megalodon. A five minute flip through Wikipedia reveals that Megalodon was late for the Jurassic by about  116 million years.
 Then there's the size.
    The one in red is a Megalodon on the small side.  The shark in this film is nowhere near that big, more like a slightly bigger Great White. This is still too much shark to be sneaking up on people in waist-deep water.
 Apparently sharks have been known to stray into fresh water from time to time so I'll let that slide.
I'll also skip past the crack art-theft team making their escape in a rowboat. (Seriously) and the essential silliness of a Shark film set in Canada because there are bigger, easier targets just waving their arms about screaming "Pick me. Pick me"
 The visuals for starters. 

This is one of the better shots.

Hey, We'll sneak in some stock footage of a shark minding his own 
business and hope nobody notices.
The secret Oil company site. Cunningly disguised to look like an abandoned industrial unit. Note the total absence of drilling equipment. Or refining equipment.  Or fences. Or signs.
 Quite a few weeds though.
Let's have another shot of the shark eating somebody. Because I can never get tired of pointing out how rubbish it looks.
 Help me, help me. I'm being menaced by a badly photoshopped shark.

 The effects team must have been really proud of this shot because they reused it about four times.
 That is a cheerful looking shark, by the way. I'm half expecting him to break into song.

   Then there's the acting (woeful), the story (Silly - but not in a  good way) the characters (Dumb, obnoxious or both),  the ending (which blatantly rips off Jaws yet again) and last but not least the editing. Yes, the editing. There's a few scenes where I'm not sure whether the director was trying to be clever or the guy using Windows Movie Maker got bored  and thought "Close enough"
 If I was being paid in Subway vouchers I'd be halfhearted too.

 When you're watching a low budget shark movie and thinking "I wonder what Roger Corman or The Asylum could have done with this." you know you are in the presence of  failure. 
 It's been made clear to me that my tolerance for terrible movies is quite high. That said, "Jurassic Shark" has no entertainment value whatsoever and I am annoyed with myself for wasting £7 on this shite. .
 Maybe next time they should get the team that did the DVD packaging to do the film.

(PS. I can guarantee that at least one person reading this is thinking "It can't be that bad. Let's check it out for myself."  Yes, it is that terrible.  Be told.)

4 comments:

  1. Yeah, it looks really bad. However, I have a high tolerance for bad movies too. But, on you word I'll stay clear of this one. What a fun and informative post.

    Your blog reminds me of this other movie blog called RandomFilmBuff.com You should check them out.

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  2. What kind of shark movie is this? That shark has only one head!

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    Replies
    1. Oh dear gods, you've seen Two-Headed Shark Attack too?
      Proof that you can always make a Shark movie more stoopid.

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  3. And one more time the use of "Jurassic" to define a prehistoric creature. If the film is about a Megalodon I espected something like "Pliocene Shark", but that not sounds so cool. Poor character development, abuse of the typically stupid blonde stereotype. My eyes bleed so I quit watching at 10 minutes.

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