A Major Disappointment

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

SUPER SHARK is another nonsense B-movie monster flick that comes to us courtesy of the SyFy Channel. This one's directed by cheese specialist Fred Olen Ray, so you have some idea of what to expect from the quality: it's ridiculous, nonsensical, and barely hangs together as a proper movie.The inspiration behind this one, as with so many, seems to be PIRANHA 3D, with the camera repeatedly ogling bikini babes and generally putting to the audience a kind of fun-loving, hedonistic lifestyle. Into this nonsense comes a prehistoric shark which has grown to gigantic proportions and seeks to wreak havoc on the local population. The efforts of the typically evil corporate villains only serve to increase the menace.You know exactly what to expect from a film like SUPER SHARK, so here we go: bad acting across the board, terrible CGI effects, and a general lack of cohesion. This one's played out in a tongue-in-cheek fashion which at least gives it a mildly campy air. Still, the effects of the giant shark really are terrible, and this is slim pickings indeed for monster lovers.

Unfortunately for this movie, I am calling it jaw-droppingly bad. I did my best to keep an open mind, as I could tell from the title that the film was not necessarily going to be good but had the potential to be a guilty pleasure. That is if they had tried putting effort into components like the story, script, characters and effects. Every single of those are done abysmally here in my opinion. Super Shark is a very poorly made movie, with effects looking so fake that I got the sense they were rushed through in construction. Even the editing manages to have a choppy feel to it. The music is a little better, but there is nothing outstanding about it either and it could have been more atmospherically used, to me it felt too obvious at times. The script doesn't feel natural whatsoever, it all feels very cheesy and stilted, while the story is ridiculous, suspense-less and completely unsurprising, complete with a pointless romance that is in danger of slowing Super Shark down. The characters I didn't give a tuppence about, they are little more than walking clichés that don't do much other than acting foolish. The shark of the title is cheap in look and not menacing at all, while the attack scenes are choppily edited, unintentionally funny and as far away as thrilling or scary as you can go. Of the acting, Sarah Lieving is the only one who looks as though she is trying, all the others look bored. Overall, jaw-droppingly awful. 1/10 Bethany Cox

I'd like to offer some observations about Super Shark that hopefully give people a better appreciation of its merits by taking into consideration the circumstances associated with making this kind of movie.Even though the main audience-appeal of the film intended by the people who created it might be the shark itself and the attractive girls in their bathing suits, there is nevertheless a genuinely important message the author is trying to get across. The greed of the oil company to get more oil to sell by drilling through rock and pumping dangerous chemicals into the water, with all the horrible consequences, is a sobering and timely issue. These things really happen, real people suffer and die from them, and the damage they do to the ecosystem is serious enough that it's worthwhile for us to be reminded of it. There are political implications too. Just consider that at the close of the film, the oil man, now free to continue his greedy plans, quotes Sarah Palin saying 'drill, baby, dill.'And to further compound the issue, even though the oil company is ultimately responsible for all the people the shark kills, they manage to successfully bribe the whistle-blower marine biologist to get her to drop her investigation. The fact that she's on a personal vendetta after the death of her brother and was let go by the bureau she worked for is a further complication similar to Bruce Wayne in the Batman movies becoming a vigilante after the death of his parents. If the audience can separate the real situation from the distraction of the girls in their bathing suits, they will see that there's actually something relevant and worthwhile going on here.The constraints that come from the relatively low budget available for a made-for-TV film of this kind are unavoidable, and rather than condemn the people who actually created the film under these poor conditions, it would be worth it to commend them for how well they rolled up their sleeves and got to work to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation.Since one of the major selling points of the film is the computer-generated visual effects, I think they deserve some comment as well. If you try to consider for a moment how a giant prehistoric shark would actually move on land, it pays to realize that since its musculature was designed to move freely in the water, all its movements on land would be awkward and unnatural. If you've seen footage of penguins swimming with so much speed, and graceful agility under water compared to the almost comical movements they make on land, you'll realize that the way the shark is depicted is actually excellent.Also, there's a good chance that a tremendous amount of the things happening on the screen look so good the audience just takes for granted that they're real and never considers how skillfully they were created digitally. All the water splashes, water spray around the shark's fin, the v-shaped waves expanding out from the shark as he approaches and retreats, the complex curved shapes of light clinging to the body of the shark and submarine under the water, etc., are masterfully rendered by the FX team here.Consider everything that happens to the oil rig, submarine, boats and planes that has to give the impression of tremendous weight and massive size. There are dozens of big budget movies that show in the theaters that don't achieve these things as well. Consider the solidity and reflectivity of the textures for the shark's skin and the hull of the tank. Taking into account the budget and time restrictions for this kind of film, the FX work is actually remarkably good. The ultimate compliment for CG work is when it doesn't get noticed at all. If you stop to think for a moment how many images in the film went by unquestioned as simply real, you'll have a better appreciation for what you're watching.To sum up, I would encourage the audience to keep in mind that it's part of the nature of this kind of movie that the producers can't get the results they would get with a hundred-million-dollar budget and the amount of time that's spent on the huge blockbusters, but the result of their efforts is as good as it can be under these conditions, and a lot of the work here, in terms of both concept and execution, shows the same level of talent and dedication you get in the very best work on the big screen.

Worst Movie Ever! Poor directing, poor acting, poor scientific knowledge, poor music to poor special effects this movie has it all. Yes, I understand that the art of a creature feature is of a (almost) poor execution that makes you smile and gives you the pleasure of spotting a few flaws. However, this is simply unforgivable to me. The more sympathetic of you may see a redeeming feature in the fact that the sheer audacity for someone to make such a terrible film will leave you laughing to the high heavens. However, it more than likely that the unintentional comedy will be overshadowed by the realisation that you have wasted your time and you will never get it back. More productive uses of your time could be watching paint dry, watching grass grow and sticking corn back on to the cob. If you do want to see a cheesy creature feature about sharks at least for your own sake stick to mega shark or spend the next 20 minutes after the movie on IMDb warning readers of the perils of taking a chance on a disastrous creature feature.