DARK WATERS (2003)
Tagline: No Air. No Time. No Escape.
(Adventure, Action, Astonishing Absence of Originality) [R]
In this one, Dane Quatrell and his partner Robin Turner are paid a huge amount of money to go check out an oil rig shark attack off the Gulf of Mexico. When they get there they realize there is much more going on than they were told including genetic testing on sharks that has made them smarter and increasingly aggressive.
Shark movies have been coming out at alarming, dare I say “concerning “rates, since 1975’s JAWS kind of launched the shark movie genre into high gear inspiring a lot of knockoffs. I say that jokingly, I actually love shark flicks. They were coming out as early as 1936 but JAWS definitely put shark films on the map. However, since DEEP BLUE SEA arrived, there have been a number of knock-offs of that film as well. This is one of them that literally features genetically enhanced sharks. In this case, it’s to make them usable for military purposes (because why not make a shark even "sharkier" (I know it's not a word)). Even though this came out 4 years after DEEP BLUE SEA, it still ends up coming across as flat and uninspired.
If this movie had just been the intro, then ended. It would have made a decent short film. There wouldn’t have been much of a plot, or much dialog, but it would have actually been better. Because after the first 10 minutes this turns into an hour and 23 minutes of terrible jokes, surface-level dialog and everyone just telling everyone how dangerous everything is on this oil rig, or in a sub, or wherever the heck they are at that point. We get about 2 minutes of actual sharks in this shark movie, but the CGI is poor and everything just kind of sucks. As usual, I don’t really like giving bad reviews, but this thing is an absolute train wreck.
I don’t mind Lorenzo Lamas (GREASE) in some roles, but his performance as Dane in this is uneven. Simmone Mackinnon (DEEP SHOCK) is rough in this as Robin Turner. It seems like they just hired her to flirt with everyone and be the “girl” in an otherwise all-male movie. None of the characters were given any depth at all. Ross Manarchy was okay as Dr. Dane Quatrell, II but that isn’t saying much. Manarchy was most famous for playing the assistant coach on the TV show “Coach”. I didn’t recognize any of the other characters in the entire film.
When it comes to shark films I can handle bad, but I can’t handle boring. This one does have an interesting story between Dane and his father, but that is really all that is going on here. Outside of that it’s a full-blown snooze fest and falls into a batter of dialog that almost sent me into a coma. There is unfortunately a slew of these generic flicks that came out from 1990 or so to around 2010. I will probably end up reviewing them all, but yeah. I am not looking forward to some of them, which is a bit weird because I love shark flicks.
This one is a rough one, but it’s not the worst I have seen. If you are going to rip off a movie and you can’t at least come close, don’t bother.
Overall this thing gets a 2 out of 7. I can’t even come close to recommending it.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF UNIFIED FILM ORGANIZATION (UFO) AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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