MANEATER (2022)

MANEATER (2022)

Tagline: 200 Teeth. 0 Chance.

(Action, Thriller, Have You Tried Shooting It?) [R]

One Bite... You Were Not Looking For Something to Eat... You Were Looking For Something To Kill

In this one, Jessie goes on her would-be honeymoon to the islands with her friends to try and get through a broken engagement. She is down on herself emotionally but is trying to make the best of it with some sightseeing. They decide to take a boat to visit the surrounding area but are not aware that the area is now home to a rogue great white that is chomping every pair of legs that dare to enter the water. Harlan a grieving father lives in the area and is hunting for the shark that killed his daughter after the local authorities failed to take action. Can Harlan find and kill the shark before Jessie and her friends become its latest victims.

First off, we get to see a good amount of natural beauty in this one. There are even several dolphin scenes. The good news is that we get a decent group of would-be victims in this that are not all cringy. While the plot is extremely predictable, it’s not bad and the effects are actually pretty over the top when it comes to the shark wounds. I don’t like a lot of gore and fortunately for me, this one isn’t super over the top for a shark flick. 

Unlike several shark flicks that came out in 2022, I can actually handle most of the dialog in this movie and not want to turn it off. Yes, there are some seemingly unnecessary and unlikely moments, but this one isn’t gratuitous which I appreciated. A few of the characters are relatable. Probably my favorite was actually Harlan played by Trace Adkins. He’s rough around the edges but soft-hearted when it counts. I haven’t seen him in anything outside of this movie. We get a small dose of Shane West who has done some decent films over the years but is probably most famous for THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. He was awesome as Tom Sawyer in that but isn’t very good in this. Nicky Whelan is good as Jessie and was actually quite a bit better than a lot of other lead actresses in low-budget shark flicks. She has been in over 60 films and television shows including the dumpster fire HALLOWEEN II (2009). Sunny is a very likable character played by Porscha Coleman. She is pretty solid in this and I wish she had gotten more screen time. I haven’t seen any of her other movies or TV shows, but aside from this, she was in 2 Christmas movies this year alone. Among the just okay cast, we have Kelly Lynn Reiter who plays Brianna (she was in BIG FREAKIN RAT along with CeCe Kelly from FAMILY CAMP). Zoe Cipres plays Emma and finally, Kaley Bowler plays Jennifer, but neither actress has been in anything I’ve seen. 

Cinematically the movie is very amateur but it is a few steps above WILD EYE RELEASING’s very low bar for shark films. They do use the line from JAWS, “we are going to need a bigger boat” which is super tacky. The other thing that is borrowed from JAWS in a way is one of the plot lines. We have another character like the mayor in JAWS that just ignores how series shark attacks are. The shark isn’t as bad as some of the sharks I’ve seen, but it doesn’t look anything like the shark in the poster. There is also a size issue between the shadow from the first shark we see and the shark later in the film which is big, but not nearly the size the shadow implies.  

Overall this is a 3 out of 7. Out of the 42 shark movies I have reviewed so far, this landed at #27. That isn’t as good as it might sound though. There are a TON of really bottom-of-the-barrel horribly written garbage shark flicks and this just floats above that.

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