Can we please stop with the shark movies?
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love shark movies, as they always hit a certain level of dumb fun. I will randomly throw on Deep Blue Sea or Jaws: The Revenge to have a good time. There’s just the right level of campiness, humor, and violence to really hit that entertainment sweet spot. Yet, we’ve still only just gotten the one good one (do I even need to say its name?). And that was over 50 years ago! It’s simply not a sub-genre that is to be taken seriously. Which is where the main problem lies.
It feels like every other month, we’re getting a new shark movie. Under Paris. Deep Water. Thrash. Chum. And it’s not like any of them are particularly good. But their biggest sin is the fact that they end up taking themselves so seriously that they don’t seem to understand fun. Under Paris is about sharks invading a flooded Paris during a triathlon. That’s absurd! Yet the movie tries to make points about environmentalism and just comes across as corny. Thrash is simply Crawl with Sharks, only without the whimsical tone or likable characters. Yet even more keep on coming!
It feels like every other week, I’m getting some email about a new shark film, and I can’t help but roll my eyes. It doesn’t help that they all look like the same kind of films we’ve seen time and time again. We’ve got Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor running into a shark while cave diving in The Devil’s Mouth. Then there’s Antonio Banderas as a cartel leader, in a film that looks oddly like 47 Meters Down, with Above & Below. And the more I think about it, Devil’s Mouth has a very similar plot to 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. It’s all the same bullshit, each and every time. Shark stories are so limited, and it feels like we’ve done them all.
What I find so fascinating about these shark films is that it’s getting increasingly more difficult to get a film funded these days, and it’s certainly not cheap to do something with sharks. And when they do go cheap, it ends up meaning the FX are worse, which just makes the movie worse. It’s all diminishing returns. That hasn’t stopped them from being pumped out faster than any other subgenre these days. Hell, I feel like I see less slashers than I do shark films, which is insanity. Those can be made for peanuts!
And the shark mayhem doesn’t seem to be ending either. Under Paris 2 is currently filming and is being directed by Alexandre Aja, and a Thrash 2 is very likely after the first film’s success on Netflix. Hell, even The Black Demon got a sequel that releases next year! But it’s not like they’re all having success, as Deep Water and Chum both bombed at the box office. And when so many are being released, it’s less likely for all of them to find success. The market is just too flooded.
I’m simply warn out. I can’t watch another movie where a poorly rendered shark takes out some one-dimensional character who can’t act their way out of a paper bag. Last year’s Dangerous Animals felt like we were finally getting a new kind of shark film. One that was well-made and treated the sharks in a more realistic light. Instead, we’ve reverted back to the early 2000s, and SyFy Originals are simply being replaced with Netflix Originals.
Are you as sick of shark films as I am? Are there any good ones I’m overlooking? Let us know in the comments!
The post Enough Already: Hollywood Has a Shark Movie Problem appeared first on JoBlo.
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