SHARK NIGHT 3D (2011) (a review)

SHARK NIGHT 3D (2011) (a review)

First the was PIRANHA, now another movie about water creatures killing students on spring break. Stars: Sara Paxton, Alyssa Diaz, Dustin Milligan, Katharine McPhee (American Idol runner up), Joel David Moore.

The story: a group of friends go to a girl's house for spring break on a private lake in Louisiana where they are attacked by a shark. They try to go for help but are attacked by more sharks. The girl's ex-boyfriend comes to help them and they are attacked by more shark. Then a big reveal and it ends.

Was it good?

No.

It's all just crap. I don't even know why they bothered with a script for this. The whole plot elements are stupid -- from being on a lake and attacked by sharks, which doesn't make the sharks more scary or anything (Louisiana gives tax breaks to film there...we can assume that's why they did it). There's this whole love interest but it never really seems important and most of the story is focused on the girl and not on the guy trying to get the girl and by the end you really don't care. The whole plan with the bad guys (because of course this isn't just random sharks and there has to be a big reveal even though they really don't try to build a mystery leading up to it so it pretty much is a useless plot twist) is stupid and lame.

Again, it's amazing when you watch something like this to see that much money spent on people who don't know what they are doing. PIRANHA got it. It wasn't a great film, but it knew the audience. They got that horror movies are the anti-Oprah art form. It's about all the stuff that parents want to keep from their kids -- sex and death. Not only is it sex and death, but it's the fact that we LIKE sex and death. Sex and death are fun! It's fun to watch people screw (or get naked at least) and it's fun to watch them get killed!

PIRANHA didn't do much, but it got that. Spring break with strippers and giant monster fish. Get naked. Have fun. And then get ripped apart. Add a story about a nice kid who likes a girl who may or may not like him who he then has to save and the movie basically writes itself.

This movie just missed everything. There's no fun. There's some death, but they are pretty lame. There's no fun sex. There's no humor to it. It takes itself seriously which would be okay if it was genuinely scary or if it had something to say...but it doesn't.

Massive fail.

*** AVOID ***