4/13/2023 0 Comments Night of the sharks 3d![]() The meat of the movie-all served up very raw, of course-kicks in after a half-hour as the first shark attack picks off one of the principals during a water-skiing spree. Red’s an arch-primitive who might have been part of the murderous clan of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Neither takes real kindly to Sara’s friends, as a hackneyed dustup at the local gas station shows. The former is a hunk who was Sara’s boyfriend before she went off to college, but who was disfigured in a boating accident during their last date. The others are the duo of Dennis (Chris Carmack) and Red (Joshua Leonard). One is Sheriff Sabin (Donal Logue), a genial hayseed who mostly patrols the lake. Once they get to their destination, the group encounters a trio of locals. Also in the bunch are football star Malik (Sinqua Walls), whom Nick’s been tutoring, and his girlfriend Maya (Alyssa Diaz), as well as Nick’s motormouth roommate Gordon (Joel David Moore), Sara’s chum Beth (Katharine McPhee) and male model Blake (Chris Zyka). ![]() The hostess is petite blonde psych major Sara (Sara Paxton), who’s lusted after by studious pre-med geek Nick (Dustin Milligan). They’re students at Tulane University, heading off for a weekend of swimming and sailing at an isolated estate in the Louisiana bayou. The first third of the movie sets the typical stage for such stuff by introducing-after a brief prologue in which we see a girl being attacked by a shark, “Jaws”-style, in the lake to which they’re headed-all the prospective fishbait. But although the acting and technical elements of “Shark Night 3D” are better than what you usually encounter in a Saturday night SyFy Network flick, that’s still where it really belongs. And for another, the last reel adds a truly goofy explanation for what’s happening that transforms the mayhem from a natural occurrence into a nefarious plot. For one thing, a lot of the action occurs during the day. Actually the title’s misleading in a couple of ways. That’s what I like to call having your rapey cake and eating it, too.The title tells you pretty much all you need to know about this would-be scary movie: it’s about shark attacks and sometimes the sharks jump into your face. (One can’t resist pointing out that one of Hayes’ last credits is a TV show called Assy McGee, which seems apropos.) But with the introduction of a snaggle-toothed townie who demands a terrorized girl strip down to her undies, the filmmakers enjoy the benefits a cynically calculated misdirection: They get to have their titillation shots – the camera literally pans up and down the shuddering woman’s chest and pubic area – with an exculpatory hands thrown in the air (it’s all in the service of the plot, you see). Initially, Shark Night 3D is constantly leering – it even rewinds and replays a back-end shot of a bikini blonde walking poolside, with the music-video-inflected stylings that constitute an aesthetic here. (An underwater-cam shot of a dog paddling proves more engrossing than any of the titular predator’s moves.)īut back to that desperation: Not content to restrict itself to an exercise in “When Nature Attacks,” the filmmakers take a hard, ugly turn into torture-porn territory. There’s little inventiveness in the many bloody ends the bland cast meets, and the 3-D photography is weirdly coy about giving us a good look at the sharks. The winkingness of these well-worn tropes marks half the fun in this kind of entertainment, but Shark Night 3D is about as humorless – and joyless – as they come. Shark Night 3D’s scripters Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg stick close to the playbook here: a collection of young, comely bodies (names are of no import bait is bait, people) are trapped in, menaced by, and picked off one by one. Ellis’ 2006 feature, Snakes on a Plane, got some steam for being a giggling exemplar of memetic marketing, but the most Shark Night 3D could hope for is to latch on, remoralike, to the success of Shark Week the toothless plot even name-checks that Discovery Channel institution, with more than a whiff of desperation.
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