After a suitably dramatic opening credits with people’s names underwater we cut to an ice cap. One part falls off and it contains the Dinoshark, frozen in ice. Oh I get it, GLOBAL WARMING. So the film begins lazily and continues in this theme. A diver doing something hugely important – probably – gets eaten. We see the entirety of the Dinoshark in the first three minutes, dissolving the tension utterly. Remember Jaws? Remember how it opened? No lessons have been learnt.
Cut to stock footage of Mexico. Everyone’s revoltingly happy and on the beach to jolly music. There’s an overbearing amount of stock footage of Mexico in this film actually. Was it funded by the Mexican tourist board? For one thing, that might help explain the low budget. For another, why would they use a film about people being eaten in Mexico as an advert for how wonderful Mexico is? During the final chase sequence, the Dinoshark heads to Paradise Beach and it cuts to more stock footage with happy music and happy, sickening people, and it all goes on for far too long. Remember that word, TONE? Switching music and style during a chase sequence sort of ruins everything. Except the wondrousness of valium.
We see our douchey protagonist in a car failing to speak Spanish to another English speaker. I shall call him Rick McDouchebag. Wait, his name is Trace McDraw? That’s even better than Rick McDouchebag! This film is the gift that keeps giving.
The first surfer death has a wilhelm scream and Jaws music rip-off. And finally we are introduced to the obvious love interest, a busty blonde who apparently teaches “environmental sciences with a focus on aquatic eco-systems” to which another douche says “big words”. So we have our stock characters – the douche and the smart hot chick – I shall call her Professor Boobs. This film has classy, well developed characters, clearly!
Going through the rest of the film is actually pretty pointless, as pretty much all the “plot” is told in the first three minutes. After we see the Dinoshark, it starts killing people – usually busty senoritas – and eventually they manage to kill it. In the meantime, there’s a slow acting scientist who works with Trace and Prof. Boobs . Boob kickstarts the investigation by using the INTERNET, that wild new technology. After searching for generic images of sharks, she finds the right one and takes off her top. Huh? Why did she do that? Well I guess she’s called Professor Boobs for a reason.
Eventually they figure out what the audience knew from the first scene with the ice cap. Great going Dr. Dickhead, tell us something we don’t know. The utter pointlessness of the investigation would have been solved if we hadn’t been shown that scene at the beginning, thus putting the tiniest bit of fucking mystery into the film.
Also, this film is set in Mexico, and there’s not a single convincing Mexican accident in it. Anyone speaking Spanish in this film sounds as though they’ve only just learnt to read and had new vocal chords put in and are still getting used to them. And the local news is read in English, by a guy whose name is Fernandez. Honestly, this is what broke my suspension of disbelief.
So, now I shall look in depth at the best part of this film: the all-girl water polo match. I don’t know why it’s in there, but it’s presence even makes its way onto the blurb. It’s really and almost intrusively overstated in this film, coached for some reason by Professor Boobs, and is obviously disrupted by the Dinoshark at the end. There’s even the compulsory inspiring speech in the locker room before the match, as their coach isn’t there. Maybe this film is actually a charming underdog story about the little all-girl-all-bikini-waterpolo-team-that-could. They have to struggle with one of their player’s losing her temper far too often, a coach who cares more about a Dinoshark that she should really let the authorities deal with instead of her getting involved, the change in time of the big match, the unfamiliar venue – how can they overcome these obstacles and win? There’s also the obstacle of the Dinoshark taking up all their screen time. Maybe it’s it’s a charming underdog story in the sense that they have to compete with the Dinoshark for the camera’s attention. Oooo, that’s real META. Man, this film is deep.
Professor Boobs makes the final shot which kills the shark, as well as her acting career, and has to have the terribly written quip, “Welcome to the endangered species list, you bastard!”. Well that’s an excellent attitude for a professor in environmental sciences to hold. What you did, Ms. Boobs, is technically genocide. You killed the only one of its kind, congratufuckinglations. A horrible end to a horrible film.
Verdict: 7.5/10 – a wonderful waste of 90 minutes of my life.
