Shark Zone (2003)

"Terror has surfaced."

Plot

Ten years ago, Jimmy Wagner was part of a diving team searching the wreck of a Spanish ship supposedly containing diamonds when they were attacked by a school of great white sharks. Everyone except for Jimmy died, including his own father and he had nightmares over the incident. Now he's in charge with keeping the beaches safe at a resort during it's summer festival when not only the sharks return but a group of Russian mobsters after retrieving the sunken treasure for themselves.

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Ever since Jaws, filmmakers have been desperate to make a ‘killer animal’ flick as good, as successful and as appreciated as Spielberg's masterpiece. It will never ever happen. Jaws was a one off. But that still doesn't stop people from trying. And trying. And trying. If they're not making films about killer crocodiles, piranhas or squid, they're simply rehashing killer sharks. What's the point if you can never top the undisputed king of the genre? All you get are comparisons, criticisms and jokes. Well Shark Zone is here to prove a point that the killer shark genre died after Jaws. And not only died, it got gutted, had it's contents spilled out over the dock and it's rotting carcass left for the tiny fish to feed off.

Production company Nu Image were behind the Shark Attack series of films and they cut as many corners as they can here with Shark Zone. Nowhere is more explicit than when you notice that many scenes appear to have been lifted from Shark Attack 2 and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon - they have. If you thought the copious use of real life shark stock footage was bad enough, then entire scenes (usually the ones involving the sharks) have just been 'borrowed' and spliced into this. Only the scenes of the new characters talking to each other seem to have been filmed for Shark Zone; everything else was filmed years ago! Shark Zone is both written and directed by Danny Lerner, the man who was producer on the previous Shark Attack films, so blame can be laid squarely at him for this cut, copy and paste job. It's actually crazy just how much footage has been re-used - shots of the town fair, boats out at sea and even two characters taking a cage dive. The latter one is even more ridiculous when Shark Zone's new characters are a white and a black man but when the underwater cage footage is shown, its of two white men from Shark Attack 2. I could make a game of watching both simultaneously and seeing just how much new material was shot here but then it would mean watching both films again.

As for the story, well.......forget it. The narrative starts off in 1712, then flashes forward to current times for a few scenes and then has another flash forward to another ten years into the future. The writers were sure trying to make this an multi-year epic. I actually moaned on the plot of ‘a community figure striving to keep the beaches open for a festival in order for the town to survive despite local authority figure refusing to believe there is a problem’ which is has become an uber-cliché itself. So many films, especially killer shark ones, use the Jaws template. Here we also get sunken treasure and some stupid plot about the Russian mafia which leads nowhere except for a bit more food for the sharks with pointless human villains designed to keep the sharks off screen for as long as possible being introduced.

We truly are looking at Ed Wood levels of incompetence when it comes to Shark Zone. There is clearly a hope that with all of the shark attacks thrown in - these sharks are very well fed - that viewers will just disengage their brain. The problem with disengaging your brain and it even operating at a primitive, basic level of awareness, is that its obvious you're watching the same National Geographic or Discovery Channel footage over and over again. Be it of the sharks breaking water or just swimming around the camera. Even the real sharks become less threatening once you've seen the same bit for the sixth time. People can talk to each other underwater and have normal conversations whilst wearing breathing apparatus. Sharks roar (a common misconception in a lot of killer shark films - they don't even have vocal chords). Sharks hunt in frenzied packs (an excuse to show lots of the same footage speeded up).

Dialogue and acting is atrocious and between Dean Cochran constantly spouting off facts about sharks that we already know and some puke-inducing quotes such as "you're my hero, dad," I think I'd rather hear the sharks roaring a bit more. Brandi Sherwood is terrible and I mean porn star level terrible. She's supposed to be a mother and have audiences develop some empathy for her when her son gets kidnapped and her husband is put in jeopardy but as soon as she starts opening her mouth, any good intentions are thrown out of the window. Bulgarian actor Velizar Binev has popped up so many times in these really cheap films that he's the go-to guy whenever a low budget company needs a 'Russian' heavy. Laughably, actor Alan Austin plays two roles - one as the main character's father in the flashback and then as the mayor in the modern day setting.

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Final Verdict

Just an infuriating waste of time and a total cash grab mainly made up of recycled footage, Shark Zone is awful and pointless in equal measure. There is a market for this type of ultimate Z-grade nonsense involving a bunch of friends a few six packs where you can laugh and joke at everything you see and not really be too worried about spending money. In terms of the sheer laughable entertainment, it can't be beaten. But as a feature film, it's one of the worst I've seen.

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Shark Zone Director(s): Danny Lerner Writer(s): Danny Lerner (story by), Sam Parish Actor(s): Dean Cochran, Alan Austin, Brandi Sherwood, Velizar Binev, Luke Leavitt, Plamen Zahov, Alexander Petrov Duration: 91 mins