Maneater (2022)

"200 teeth. No chance."

Plot

After her engagement ends days before the wedding, Jessie still takes her honeymoon trip to a tropical island, only with six of her college friends instead of her ex-fiancé. They take off on an overnight boat cruise, unaware that a rogue great white shark is hunting them down. But it doesn't kill because it's hungry; this shark is killing purely for the thrill of it.

---

Nothing to do with the solid but very repetitive video game of the same name which was released in 2020, Maneater is yet another rinse and repeat killer shark film. I'm seriously beginning to lose track of which ones I've seen and which ones I haven't since 2020, with most of them featuring the same sun and sand locations and ropey special effects. I thought was exhausted from the 2010s killer shark overkill but in the last few years we've had Great White, Shark Frenzy, The Reef: Stalked, Shark Bait, Blind Waters, The Requin, Shark Season and Swim to name a few. I've probably missed some too but I'd be hard pressed to name anything distinguishable about any of them, all blurring into one. Maneater will be another one to tick off and consign to the dustbin of history.

Maneater sets its stall out within the opening few minutes with the death of an unnamed character. There's no dramatic build-up. The shark effects are lousy. The camera waves all over the place and there's plenty of quick cuts before the water turns red and then we move on to the next scene. The audience hasn't even had time to settle down yet and already we've got our first pointless kill out of the way without it serving any purpose except telling us there's a killer shark (well, duh, we wouldn't be watching this if we didn't know there's a killer shark in it). It's literally the same shark attack sequence you see in most of these films, signaling a complete lack of imagination and an unwillingness to try and make them effective. For most of these killer shark flicks, once you've seen the first kill and you know how the film will set its stall out, then you know whether it's going to be a slog to get through or something someone has put a bit of effort into. And Maneater is a slog.

Maneater bogs itself down with its exposition and characters far too much for this type of film, especially given most of the characters won't survive so it's wasted time, There is an attempt to craft some characters with interesting back stories, particularly Jessie and fisherman Harlan Burke, but the rest of them are literally given a short sequence on board the boat where they talk about their lives and the script gives us all the exposition we need about who they are, what their jobs are, what their personalities are like and so on. And then that's it, the film moves on. They're a bland bunch of characters, so nondescript that I couldn't even remember their names, who would have been better off remaining anonymous because I cared less about them after the exposition than I did before. Director Lee at least makes things unpredictable by killing characters off fairly rapidly one after another, and sometimes suddenly or in a different order than you'd predict.

However, once the shark starts whittling down the cast, it does so very quickly and with little dramatisation. You don't get chance to sit and think about one attack before the shark comes along and kills the next character. Just allow the narrative to breathe for a minute or two because the rapid-fire kills don't actually mean anything when they're done so quickly and haphazardly. The shark looks terrible, mainly brought to life with close-up toothy head shots, with some FX moments looking a bit rough around the edges as if they haven't been finished. They couldn't even afford to make a floating body for one of the aftermath scenes and so the corpse is just CGI - it looks terrible but worse yet is that the water itself is CGI too, like they forget to film the shot during production and added it in post-production.

Country singer Trace Adkins is the Quint-like great white hunter and is arguably the best thing about Maneater, dropping some f-bombs and home truths on people when he sees fit. He's the only one who actually feels like a well-rounded character. Nicky Whelan looks fantastic in her bikini and shorts but she looks so bored and unenthusiastic being here as if she was only starring in this to fulfil a contract. When her character has her Final Girl moment to take on the shark, it feels awfully rushed and pretty thin as far as her character arc goes. It's not even a thrilling finale out at sea, with the survivors coming up with a plan which involves them not really putting themselves in harm's way much (stand and shoot from the boat sounds a bit too easy!). Jeff Fahey is on hand to cash a pay cheque in a cameo role as some shark scientist who is only in two scenes, one of which was clearly designed to segway into a sequel.

---

Final Verdict

Maneater is too dull and ridden with banality for it ever to succeed. It's a tough watch, filled with lousy special effects, characters we don't care about and not a thrilling moment in sight. There's a lot of carnage on screen but the lack of money to spend on thrills and spills is obvious and a film about a killer great white shark should never be this much of a chore to get through. Even some of the lesser Asylum sharksploitation films at least had some zip to them.

---

Maneater Director(s): Justin Lee Writer(s): Justin Lee Actor(s): Nicky Whelan, Trace Adkins, Jeff Fahey, Shane West, Branscombe Richmond, Porscha Coleman, Kim DeLonghi, Zoe Cipres Duration: 93 mins