Movie Review: Jurassic Shark (2012)

Jurassic Shark (2012) - Canada - Horror/Action - NR

A.K.A. Attack of the Jurassic Shark

Directed by Brett Kelly

Starring Celine Filion, Christine Emes, Angela Parent, Emanuelle Carriere, Duncan Milloy, Phil Dukarsky, Kyle Martellacci, Jurgen Vollrath

This can be a fun movie if you don't mind the silliness and glaring signs of its low budget showing through.

An oil company drilling into an ice pocket above an oil reserve (just go with it) causes the prehistoric ice to melt and empties it into a lake and unknowingly releases a prehistoric megalodon shark. A group of thieves who have stolen a painting and a group of college girls out to expose the oil company for illegal drilling, are both attacked by the shark on the lake, both losing members of their crews and end up being stranded on the island with the oil refinery.

This movie has alternated with Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas as the lowest rated movie on IMDB and presently is rated lower than Saving Christmas. This should give you an idea how bad reviewers are on IMDB. I have seen horribly produced and torturous movies rated 5 to 6 average on IMDB and this is rated the lowest? When Las Vegas Serial Killer (1986) is rated a 3, one of the most god awful painful to watch movies I have ever had to force myself through to the end, and this movie is rated a 1.5, this assures me that people who rate movies on IMDB are either incredibly dense or incredibly sadistic, and probably both. I use IMDB for production information and pay zero attention to ratings and little to reviews on the site.

Is this a good movie? Not if you compare it in kind to the average for this type of movie; but then a lot of those movies have a bigger budget and recognizable stars. Is it as bad as the basement dwellers who rate movies on IMDB make it out to be? Hell no! If this were a seasoned production company like The Asylum behind this or a big studio, this would be a letdown. Being this is a low budget, if not no budget, indie production, their end result is not that bad considering the means they likely had available. So I'm going to review this as the indie film it is, and not as the Hollywood production it is not.

Being a low budget production it shows through in several areas. The cast is suppose to be on an island, though in the background you can clearly see the land beyond the lake is actually connected to the island they supposedly occupy. This calls for a bit of willing suspension of disbelief, something I had to do from beginning to end watching Armageddon and it still didn't make that movie any better.

The audio in Jurassic Shark varies from poor to excellent. On average it is good, but there are a few scenes where I wish the director had screamed to the actors "Stop whispering". There is one scene in which the bad guys are huddled together and whispering among themselves to be out of earshot of the others and I must say they successfully kept their plan a secret because I could not hear a damn thing they were saying. Fortunately that was not the norm for the audio and other than a few spots like that it is pretty good.

The quality of the video is excellent. Some of the underwater photography leaves a bit to be desired; I only say this as a movie viewer not as a photographer because I don't know a damn thing about underwater photography. Editing in some places lends to confusion. The now combined group has to trek to the other side of the island to the refinery. They find someone on the shore of the lake, and it left me scratching my head as it was not clear they had apparently gone back to where they started.

The whole of the movie clocks in at a little over 78 minutes. The actual movie itself is only 65 minutes, followed by what has to be the longest end credits I have witnessed at 13 plus minutes. I was going to watch the end credits through but they won and I surrendered.

Jurassic Shark is a silly movie, but it's a fun movie if you are willing to look past its limitations and enjoy it for the effort that was made. I've read complaints about the CGI shark not being very realistic, but it worked for me and was kind of fun too. The last scene of this movie had me roaring in laughter; that's a good way to end a movie.

My Rating: 3 Fingers, if you are willing to enjoy a movie for what it is. If you are expecting and demanding a Hollywood movie from a low budget indie, then you probably want to skip this one and stop rating movies on IMDB and get out of your parents' basement.

This movie is available on Blu-ray.

Toxic Fletch