Malibu Shark Attack (2009)

Director: David Lister

Starring: Peta Wilson, Evert McQueen

Run Time: 85 mins

Certificate: 15

 

Plot Outline: An underwater earthquake unleashes a tsunami that strikes Malibu, bringing with it a pack of ferocious and hungry goblin sharks. The beaches are evacuated in time but a group of lifeguards and construction workers are stranded in the high water and must brave the odds to make it to dry land.

The Review: Baywatch meets Deep Blue Sea in this absolutely feeble Sci-Fi Channel killer shark stink fest. It's been about six months since I last saw a killer shark film so something must be going wrong in the production line somewhere! At least the great white shark, the tiger shark and the mako shark are all given the day off for a change and instead the bizarre-looking goblin shark is the creature of the day. It's a little-known deep sea shark that I'm guessing isn't half as aggressive or deadly as it is made out to be here. But this is a Sci-Fi Channel original after all (my spine shudders every time I mention that phrase) and it does little to make us want to know more about goblin sharks. In fact it does little of anything except prove that the Sci-Fi Channel needs it's broadcasting licence revoked.

The film begins like one of those double header episodes of Baywatch where the Hoff and his team of lifeguards had some disaster to deal with but had to handle it on a TV show budget. Here the lack of budget is evident as there's a pretty flimsy-looking wall of water and then some blatant news footage spliced in to make it look like the tsunami has caused damage along the coast. The fact that this huge tsunami doesn't even take out a small beach hut yet destroys everything else around it is a bit hard to stomach. But prepare yourself for gravity-defying lapses in logic and ridiculous contrivances so bad you wonder whether they did have a script to begin with. Then in a really pointless twist later on, the survivors manage to make it to a flooded building where the sharks follow them inside and pursue them along semi-flooded corridors ala Deep Blue Sea. By this time I'd grown tired of waiting for people to die, especially the three main characters who were involved in some sort of love triangle. The cast is awful and Peta Wilson both looks and sounds like a guy in here so quite why there are two men chasing her when there's a better-looking blonde bimbo with less clothing in the cast is beyond me. The other characters are rounded off with the likes of some unnamed construction workers (i.e. shark bait) and a newly engaged lifeguard and her husband-to-be. Despite the big group of characters, as per usual it's only the minor ones who are killed off. Why not let the fat bearded construction worker live for a change instead of the supermodel lifeguard?

The CGI goblin sharks look terrible. They don't even remotely look realistic. What's worse is that they use the same couple of shots over and over again so brace yourselves for constant visual harassment. Fake fins are used to try and generate tension above the water but it's so overdone (and to be fair, most shark films since Jaws have failed to make good use of the fin to get the blood pumping). There's no point in just rehashing these shark clichés without actually having them mean anything. The attacks themselves happen so quickly that it's almost impossible to see what is going on. Most attacks consists of whoever is in the water looking around, looking a little worried and then suddenly the film cuts to a pair of CGI shark jaws about to chomp down on them. Cue some bloody water and then a shot of the shark swimming away. It's terrible the first time so after about the eighth attack, its just boring. The sharks are made out to be super-intelligent too, smashing away at the foundations of the submerged lifeguard tower to try and get to the humans inside and also jumping up into the air and snatching people standing on the edge of a jetty. At least the sharks there were genetically-bred to be intelligent and given reason to hunt down their former captors - the sharks here are meant to be normal sharks so why the hell are they so angry and so persistent in trying to eat the same group of people when clearly the tsunami would have caused hundreds of other people to be stuck in the water along the coast and further inland.

Final Verdict: Malibu Shark Attack is really bad. When a film makes Shark Attack 2 look like the greatest shark film ever made, you know you're treading water. However the technical experts on this film really need to speak to Asian governments about their tsunami-proof beach huts. Splendid pieces of kit that will protect you from 100ft high walls of water.

Rating: