SAND SHARKS (2012)

SAND SHARKS (2012)

We're stuck between a rock... and a shark place. – Sandy Powers

This movie is about what you would expect given the title. There is a party promoter on an island trying to impress his father by bringing a massive amount of tourism to White Sands. The only issue is that it’s becoming more and more apparent that some sort of beast is eating the town’s folk. That beast just happens to be a really rough looking shark that can swim though sand as well as water. The movie actually does a better job of explaining how this could happen than a lot of sci-fi movies do, when explaining their reasons why non-sense is happening. It’s a CGI battle between the sand sharks and the will to forge ahead and party on the beach anyway. 

First off let me say this is a b-movie and b things are definitely happening, but in spite of some of the horrid reviews I found myself enjoying this one. The acting is actually pretty great all the way around and that is pretty rare for a flick like this.  Eric Scott Woods is pretty solid playing the cop that’s just trying to figure it all out. He actually has more credits as a producer than an actor, but he’s been in a few other b-movies like AVANCHE SHARKS and FIRE TWISTER among others. He was also involved in the CREEPSHOW series on Shudder. The movies main actress is Brooke Hogan who plays Sandy Powers. She is also the daughter of wrestler Hulk Hogan in real life. Vanessa Evigan, plays police officer Brenda Stone in this, and she does a pretty good giving off a Jewel Staite in FIREFLY kind of feel for this role. Things were also pretty great with the secondary roles overall, from Angus (played by Robert Pike Daniel) who sounds like captain Barbosa from PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN to Sparky (played by Jack Kennedy) who is like a rented Jason Statham. 

Storyline wise we get a few really great one liners and I really liked that about this thing. Out of the shark movies I have watched recently this one is actually better than a few of them, but it does have a few major problems. 

Issue number 1 is that we hardly get any shark for a shark movie. When we do see a shark it’s really quick CGI and it’s done. The other issue is that the CGI itself is rough even given the really cool sand shark design they are using. I mean, the concept on this thing is just rad. The other issue we have is that the characters they are trying to get us to care about are the wrong ones. The characters we do empathize with seem to not get much screen time. For those reasons I can see the knocks against this thing even for movie fans who like b-movie shark garbage. Cinematically this thing weak, even with the very few shots involving practical effects.

Overall I have to give this a 4 out of 7, mainly because I WOULD watch it again if I was doing a shark movie marathon. It’s quite a bit better in some ways than many other shark movies I’ve reviewed.

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