We're Gonna Need a Bigger Barbi

When summer hits, it's time for sharks.

I don't make the rules. 

But occasionally, I love them.

Quick Plot: It's 1946 down under when a quartet of gangsters crashes their stolen bounty deep into a river. Leader Bull Maddock (played by Jake Ryan who I have to believe is known as the Australian James Gandolfini) hires a struggling and scrappy diving company to retrieve the goods. The price is right, even if the details are obviously sketchy.

On the team is enthusiastic Clara, quiet Jimmy, and kind but usually drunk Ernie. 

In the water is a bull shark. 

That's essentially the plot of Fear Below, a genuinely fun little 90 minutes. Written by Gregory Moss and Matthew Holmes (the latter who also directed), this is the kind of zippy little genre flick that satisfies the exact itch you needed scratched. The good guys are likable and quirky, the bad guys are charismatically mean. The shark action isn't as sharp as you might like in a shark movie, but that's where the genius of the setup comes into play.

Fear Below is the kind of concept I love to discover in a genre film: a threat we know in a setting we rarely see. By placing the action in the 1940s, we get layers of added intrigue that raise this above the usual "there's a shark in the water" fare. Our characters are WWII vets. There are racial and gender dynamics that affect each interaction, and the limited technology means there are never any easy solutions. 

More importantly, Fear Below just has a great attitude. I'll take more please. 

High Points

We don't get too much backstory into our characters, but the scraps and actors' charms are just enough to keep us fully invested and rooting for a win

Low Points

I queued up Fear Below because I saw "heist + shark" and thought it would be a dumb good time. Had I any inkling of its 1940s period setting, I probably would have watched faster. All this is to say that "Fear Below" is a terribly bland title, only slightly more interesting than the even emptier poster art. Where was the marketing department on this one? 

Lessons Learned

It's never too early for nicknames

People are never more creative than when they've got a gun to their head

Working in a river is like working in a cave

Rent/Bury/Buy

Fear Below isn't a new classic, but it's quick and fun watch well worth your time. Find it on Hulu.

She'll Fill You Up (On Blueberry Pancakes)

As we begin the slow and sad goodbye to summer, it only feels right to end the season with (another) shark attack. Dive in!

Quick Plot: A ridiculously quick prologue shows us a diver getting eaten, only to cut to a credits montage that might have actually been a recycled commercial for a Hawaiian cruise. Hot bodies in water, hot bodies diving for volleyballs, and all the usual activities that involve hot bodies in bikinis.

Elsewhere on the island, a young surfer heads out early to catch some waves, only to quickly be devoured by a very large shark. Her father, Captain Harlan, is furious at how the local authorities are doing nothing to hunt down the creature and serve it vengeance. Apparently, much like Under Paris, it's the scientists and animal rights activists who are now in control, leaving anyone who dares to set their toe in the ocean to become potential fish food.

Cue the disposables! A batch of adult friends (to be clear, they're NOT couples) enjoy a private cruise when, guess what? They meet a hungry shark. Down goes the captain, his partner, and all of final girl Jessie's pals. That includes Shane West, who must have committed some pretty heinous Hollywood crimes for this to be his 2022 resume. 

Ever watch an enjoyably terrible movie only to realize, in between giggles, that it actually has very dangerous opinions? Sure, many a zombie flick plays like a 90-minute commercial for the NRA and the some of your collection basket money at any given Catholic church surely goes to the funding of the demonic possession genre, but sometimes, there are other ominous signs that your filmmaker might have something of an agenda that involves more than attempting to scare you out of the water. 

Harlon, Maneater's hero, is played by country star Trace Adkins, a whiter than mayonnaise man who butts heads with the people of color around him, one of whom happens to be the island's ineffectual police chief. Heroine Jessie is a blond-haired-blue-eyed beauty medical student who takes care of her sick mother and quickly pivots into action lead when the moment calls (the fact that she can't administer year one Girl Scout level first aid on any of her dying friends seems to bother no one). When peace is restored and Jessie sits in shock in Sheriff Kula's office, his suggestion that she speak to a therapist is rebuffed by Harlan's more scientific approach: to overcome trauma, one just needs a big pile of blueberry pancakes. Our traumatized heroine agrees. 

I don't know writer/director Justin Lee's politics, so it's certainly possible that Maneater's anger comes more from innocently awkward storytelling than anger at  strides in mental health and environmental activism. To be clear, Maneater is wildly terrible and even more wildly entertaining. Montages are deployed more frequently than a Hallmark Christmas movie. CGI sharks hunt in knee-high water. Shotguns defy physics. It's very, very dumb.

High Points

About 25 minutes into Maneater, there's a blink-and-you-miss-it shot where a confident young man leaps off a cliff and lands in the jaws of a shark. It's random, never acknowledged, and honestly? A perfect shot.

Low Points

Many a good movie stumbles in its ending. Maneater (not a good movie) stumbles, tries to hold on, then slips on its other foot, goes down, starts to get up, then simply forgets how its limbs actually work. The action finishes, leaving us a good ten minutes of denouement. It's a weird pacing decision, sure, but now understand that said denouement is put into the fuzzy acting skills of Trace Adkins, a "why am I doing this sh*t" Jeff Fahey, and a young actor that I have to imagine was simply the only guy that came into the audition room wearing pants. It's a seemingly endless dialogue scene done to set up a sequel, and written with the mandate to culminate with a poorly worded Jaws reference. It's mind-bogglingly bad. 

I kind of loved it.

Lessons Learned

Tragic deaths involve car accidents or drug overdoses, not shark meals

Dolphins are a good time

The best way to decipher whether a creature is a devil or a fish is to see if it bleeds

The later in life you graduate pre-med, the worse you'll be at helping anyone in a medical emergency

Rent/Bury/Buy

Let's be clear: Maneater is a bad movie. It also might be a bit, well, dumbly conservative, if that makes sense. Still, if you're the kind of idiot like me who relishes this kind of swing, it will likely entertain you. Find it on Hulu and pour on the maple syrup. 

Le Shark

Society is held together (tentatively) by agreed-upon traditions directed by shared rules. When we break such contracts, we risk true chaos. 

All I'm really saying is that when summer hits, it's time to watch a shark movie.

Quick Plot: Jaelyn and her husband Kyle are unwinding on a scenic vacation in Vietnam. They need the break. A few months earlier, tragedy struck when their daughter was born without a heartbeat in a home labor.

Jaelyn's main coping method comes via support on social media, something Kyle avoids at all costs. With minimal cell service in their far away paradise, Jaelyn doesn't have much opportunity to connect with anyone. The charm of history and delicious fruits is starting to wane as the couple settles in for the night in their high-priced floating villa during a tropical storm, only to wake up with their shelter now floating in the middle of the water. 

And as you might guess, phones don't work well in the middle of Vietnamese waters. You know what does? Sharks!

FRENCH sharks.

Let's take a moment to address the stupidity of the title of this movie. I confess, I had no idea what a requin was. I assumed it was a fancy vocabulary word that never came up in SAT prep. So I used my handy full-service internet not in the middle of Vietnamese waters to check. And boy was I mad.

Shark. In French.

I'm sorry, THE (English) SHARK (French). 

My brain hurts and I blame whoever titled this movie. 

I can put that aside to evaluate the actual product, which is...fine. As I've said before, most shark films have severe limitations. Jaws: The Revenge aside, most sharks don't come with traumatic childhoods. They didn't drown while their teenage protectors were having sex, and they generally don't enjoy bowls of chilli while wearing their victims' faces. They move, they hunt, they move again. Virtually every shark tale (maybe even Shark Tale?) has no choice but to feature multiple scenes where puny human stick legs frantically try to swim, music crescendoing, just in time to bump into a raised surface they can climb as the mighty jaws snap just out of reach.

Obviously, that happens in The Requin. It ALWAYS happens in a shark movie, even one that's half French by way of Vietnam by way of Universal Studios, Florida. Writer/director Le-Van Kiet creates some tension with the shipwreck, but the shark action itself never feels that fresh (and that's before the Megalodon 3-esque money shot in the final act). Jaelyn's arc in overcoming her own trauma is more interesting, but I just don't think The Requin ever had the potential to balance a very human story about recovering from a stillbirth with the excitement of CGI shark attacks in a way that truly clicked. Instead, we get some of both, which is perfectly fine for a lazy summer warmup. 

High Points

There's been a refreshing reconsideration of Alicia Silverstone's career recently (at least in the movie circles I find myself in) and The Requin is a nice reminder of how she is, and has always been a star. 

Low Points

One can guess pretty quickly that both members of this marriage are not making it out alive. The problem with Le Shark's execution of this is that it telegraphs Kyle for death so early, then proceeds to give us MULTIPLE teases that by the time he closes his eyes for good, it's a bit hard to care

Lessons Learned

Construction makes you a maniac

IMDB found this point notable, so how can I not:

(and yes, as mentioned earlier, this was filmed in Florida)

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. The Requin is probably right in the middle of the pack of upper lower budget shark attack movies. If you're a big Silverstone fan or a shark completist, there's plenty here. But if either of those things don't charm you, it's likely a pass. 

Swimming With the Sharks

There's no better time for a shark attack than high summer. 

Let's do this.

Quick Plot: Lisa (Mandy Moore) is an uptight American on vacation in Mexico with her worldlier younger sister Kate (Claire Holt). In an effort to shed the boring image that got her recently dumped, Lisa reluctantly agrees to go shark cage diving with a pair of handsome townies.

Cue Matthew Modine as Captain Billy Taylor, a laid back sailor whose shifty boat unnerves Lisa but can't shake the spunky Kate. After some illegal water chumming, the girls are suited up and lowered down to experience the wonders of underwater tourism. 

Everything is perfectly Instagrammable until their cage's wiring snaps, dropping them down the titular distance to the bottom of the ocean floor. With a dwindling supply of oxygen and a growing circle of teased sharks, the sisters struggle to survive. 

Written and directed by The Strangers: Prey At Night's Johannes Roberts, 47 Meters Down has the advantage/disadvantage of coming out in the much brighter shadow of ANOTHER PG-13 rated shark attack flick, The Shallows. It's hard to not compare the two, and on that end, 47 Meters Down is the clear loser. Aside from its lack of a seagull sidekick, it's ultimately not as pretty, not as tense, and simply not as interesting.

That being said, the film is...fine. It wisely moves fairly quickly, paring down too much exposition or pre-water character buildup to trust most of the internal dynamics between a pair of close but wildly different sisters. Moore and Holt play their family dynamic clearly, and it's enough to make up for the fact that the characters on the page have little to offer. Look, Blake Lively is no Saoirse Ronan, but she managed to create a clear enough vision of a genius surfer girl who knew how make use of her jewelry. Kate and Lisa are as generic white girls as their names imply.

A sequel is already in the works, and much like the Wrong Turn or Step Up series, I can see this being a case where the lower profile followups end up being far more fun than the original. In the meantime, this is a perfectly suitable time waster, particularly when you want to look at pretty underwater scenery occasionally brightened with blood.

High Points

Like many a human being, I find limited air supply an incredibly terrifying premise, and 47 Meters Down does a good job of establishing these conditions to yield the appropriate audience reaction of feeling unpleasantly suffocated

Low Points

It's hard to say exactly what keeps the film in such mediocre territory, but it's probably a combination of low enthusiasm writing and weird underwater visibility that just keeps everything at a distance

Lessons Learned

Really, we just need one that would have solved the entire issue: never make important life decisions with the sole factor being, "will my ex-boyfriend see these pictures on social media and change his mind about our relationship status." Kids, you've been warned

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. 47 Meters Down is streaming on Netflix, which makes it an ideal pick for a gym watch or laundry fold accompaniment. It's pretty to look at and slightly darker than you might expect, but ultimately, I'd rather watch a Gossip Girl target sew up her wounds with her necklace any day of the week.

I'm Doing a Thing! A Shark Thing

New Yorkers, dig out your speedos and join me this Thursday night in Brooklyn for a special thing!

I'll be joining the Kevin Geeks Out roster this week for a shark-taculor evening celebrating everything from Amity's elected officials to Fonzie's big leap. Tickets are just $16, and that price covers hearing me ramble on about my favorite use of a shark in a non-shark-centric film from the last decade.

Oh come on now. You know me better than that.

Put on your favorite SS-inspired Rat King armor and come listen to a variety of funny folks talk about your favorite carnivores on screen. Oh yeah, and I'll talk about John Turturro's dance number in The Nutcracker 3D. AS IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT.

See you there!

Ear This!

It's a double whammy of podcast punching this week. First up, my 7-episode old show, The Feminine Critique, Christine and I don our glittery synchronized swimming caps and head to the water.

Literally...

And figuratively.

Download us with your podcast ap thingamajig or head here to stream.

Also in podcastland, I guest star on this week's episode of Outside the Cinema, where host Bill By Force and I discuss Mario Bava's pre-giallo giallo The Girl Who Knew Too Much and, far more excitingly, the Mario Lopez star vehicle form 1999, Outta Time.

I don't know how else to say it: Outta Time is the greatest 90 minutes you never knew existed.

Head here  for the full experience. Hurry up! Dive in!

I'm On a (Haunted) Boat

Every now and then, a movie so loosely called ‘a movie’ arrives in front of my eyes. Sometimes this kills me with boredom or discomfort (season’s greetings, Deadly Little Christmas) but others, something truly wonderful happens. Something Unborn Sins-like you might even say.

Movies--rather, ‘movies’--can do many things. They can make you laugh, cry, scream, learn, or, in the case of today’s Instant Watch New Classic, sit back with your mouth hanging agape and say...YES.

Quick Plot: A group of horrible teenagers spend the weekend on the Horrible Pothead Teenager’s new boat. 

So not only are these teenagers horrible, they’re also rich, making them even more horrible.

After a cleaning-the-boat AND drinking-on-the-boat montage, the Horrible People pause to discuss, as you do, what they’re afraid of. Clearly they haven’t seen House of Fears or they’d know that such a conversation will immediately lead to their death via their phobia, which of course includes the following:

-bugs

-being left alone

-drowning (gee, THAT’S easy)

-something someone mumbled that I couldn’t actually understand

So let's just say it was Mumbles

-crazy demented people

-other dimensions

Just as we decide we’re going to unleash a crazy demented bundle of interdimensional bugs on these Awful Awful Characters, screenwriter (and director, and costume designer, and director of photography, and art director, and set designer, and writer of a few original songs, and body double for the blond) Olga Levens shows us mercy and pulls the classic prankster-who-cried-wolf-actually-dying trick.

See, Horrible Pothead has some health issues and isn’t supposed to swim, but Horrible Blond Skank goads him into it. Aaaaaaaaand he doesn’t surface. So Horrible Blond Skank frantically dials 911--in the middle of the ocean--to no avail because there’s OBVIOUSLY not going to be any service, while Horrible Mousy Brunette dives in. But Horrible Blond Skank spots a giant CGI shark--of whom we will never see again--so Horrible Mousy Brunette comes out of the water, pleads with Horrible Asian Stud to help, so he then proceeds to scream and threaten violence at Horrible Blond Skank.

OH! And two scenes earlier, Horrible Asian Stud--who previously dated Horrible Blond Skank--hits on Horrible Mousy Brunette. One scene after that, Horrible Mousy Brown FLASHES BACK TO the Horrible Courting Scene that was one scene earlier and looks longingly with a wistful look. Because Horrible Asian Studs who slap your own Horrible Best Friend are clearly ones you don’t let get away.

So now everyone is miserable which makes them act like even more horrible people. To calm themselves, they tell ghost stories because, you know, duh. What else do you do when you’re lost at sea and mourning the dude who brought you there? 

This sequence is amazing, because it lets the previously quiet Horrible Australian Girl tell a tale that involves a gnome.

Yup, Haunted Boat has sharks AND gnomes. Rather, A shark and A gnome. Beat that, The Reef!

But don’t get too excited because like the Horrible CGI Shark, the Forest Gnome (who I can’t call horrible, because come on, forest gnome!) is gone for good. Sigh.

Next comes a seizure, because that’s cool. Horrible Australian Girl foams at the mouth, prompting Horrible Blond Skank to shout, with skill Meryl Streep could never know, “I’m NOT staying on a boat with an epileptic!”

Look honey, this is 2011. They have rights too.

The two remaining dudes--Horrible Asian Stud and Not Actually That Horrible Nerdy Guy--take the boat’s raft out to find some help. While gone, an albino not-doctor (who’s also actually not that horrible) comes on board to find bugs crawling out of Horrible Australian Girl’s ears. But then Horrible Blond Skank aims a flare gun at his face and he “has to go!”

Least offensive shot of an albino available

Yeah, because that makes perfect sense.

Then other stuff happens maybe kinda I dunno sure sorta. The ending--SPOILER!, except I actually have no idea what happened so not quite--is...um....well...a twist? I *think* that we find out that Horrible Mousy Girl actually imagined the whole thing? Or that her friends just didn’t exist and she went on a boat by herself? Or that they did exist and she went on the boat with them after having this zany adventure on her own? Or that God is a cloud and rainbows show when he cries and unicorns have feelings too but snowmen will hurt you if you let them know your weaknesses? And a baloo is a bear and wuzzle means to mix and all work and no play makes Homer something something?

I haven’t been this confused since Safety In Numbers. Luckily, I’m confused in a far better way. See, if you recall, I HATED that other ending-on-a-boat low budget slasher because it was joyless. Haunted Boat is an awful, awful film, but it’s so adorable in its ambitious incompetence that I absolutely adored it. 

Even if everyone inside of it was Terrible, Horrible, No Good and Very Bad.

High Points

I’m not being completely sarcastic when I say Haunted Boat has its potentially creepy moments. None of them *actually* work because, you know, nothing in the film actually works, but a few of the ghostings did catch me by surprise and were occasionally executed with some genuine skills. Some.

Low Points

I understand that obtaining the rights to music can be an expensive part of an indie film’s budget, and hence often demands a few public domain tunes. But there are still a few considerations one should take when choosing tracks, like not following what I imagine is a local band’s hard rock shoutiness with the classical violins from the De Beers commercials...and then reusing the De Beers music at the climax of the film

Lessons Learned

You know how gross it is when your body decomposes

Girls can never be trusted

If you’re from the Valley, you are also not smart

The Winning Line

“Here’s some Volume. It will calm her down”

I rewound this moment twice, just to make sure. While it doesn’t quite match Tara Reid’s pronunciation of New-Found-Land, I do consider it amazing. And further proof that if you're from the Valley, you're not that smart

Why Oh Why Question of the Day

As I mentioned in my review of Goblin, I simply don’t understand why a filmmaker insists on making every one of its teenage characters a disgusting person. It’s not entertaining in the least for an audience to despise every person on screen, even if you think it makes their death scenes more rewarding. I’m far more affected when I actually care about a character and THEN have to see him or her undergo horrors than when I just want them out of my line of vision

I toast not you

Rent/Bury/Buy

Haunted Boat is a horrendous little film, but connoisseurs of the ridiculous will find it weirdly enjoyable and well worth a 90 minute Instant Watch. Or maybe I’m just pushing it to see if anyone else can explain the ending, because despite four years of good grades in college, I just don’t think I’m smart enough. And I'm not even from the Valley.