SHARKANSAS WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE (2015)
Tagline: You Can Never Truly Escape
(Action, Adventure, Tunneling Sharks Will Eat Your Face Off) [R]
Note: This movie was never given a MPA rating. It likely would have gotten an [R]. On steaming services, it is given a TV-MA.
What are we going to say, who's going to believe us…I mean they are going to think we skipped the donuts and went straight for the hard stuff.
In this one, fracking, releases hardened bullet-proof prehistoric sharks from an ancient ocean beneath Arkansas. These sharks can dig swim through the soil and begin attacking a group of women and a few guards from a nearby women’s prison. Meanwhile, Detective Kendra Patterson and Detective Adam are tracking down what they think are human killers in the area only to find they are dealing with freakin sharks.
First off, given the title I walked into this expecting it was going to be a bit on the exploitative side, but in the effort to at least try and watch most shark films I gave it a chance. There is a bit of “sexy” stuff in here, but ultimately there really isn’t anymore in this than there are most other shark movies. It’s actually tamer than APEX PREDATORS and several others. I was also a bit surprised at how well-written a lot of the lines were especially in the latter half of the film.
The cast includes Christine Nguyen (ATTACK OF THE KILLER DONUTS) gets a lot of screen time and actually plays a cool character in this while doing a fairly decent job of it. Dominique Swain (FACE/OFF) plays “Honey”. She’s a pretty terrible character in this and the acting is rough. The same can be said for Cindy Lucas (PIRANHACONDA) who plays Anita. Amy Holt (DINOCROC VS SUPERGATOR) also gets a lot of screen time, but her storyline is all over the place so it never really feels like she gets a chance to embrace the character. John Callahan who was also in DINOCROC VS SUPERGATOR is actually a delight as Carl, a stern but kind prison guard. The other main notable in the movie is Traci Lords (BLADE) who plays Detective Kendra Patterson. She gets nearly every funny line in the movie.
Where this movie really fails in the CGI. There are some scenes where I was asking myself if the people doing the CGI just quit in the middle of rendering because the CGI is really bad. The practical effects are also laughable giving this thing a budget 80’s feel. The movie also has a really weak soundtrack and score. Another failure on the part of this film is the actual shark attacks. I think they were purposely really not showing shark bite stuff or much blood, was to keep the budget down.
Getting back to the things that work, I have to bring up the pacing. I thought this thing moved along just fine. It ended up being a lot more fun than I expected. I guess I thought this was going to be more of a really flippant exploitation film that I would have to suffer through. I actually thought it was pretty good.
Overall this thing gets a solid 4 out of 7. If you want a five for a shark movie though, you have to have at least a few visible shark attacks. This one speeds them up so fast that it’s ridiculous. 
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF SYFY AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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