After her boyfriend comes from behind, giving the woman a scare, she is left to peacefully wade in the calm lake water while he heads back to the trailer. But before long, her body is being flung in every direction as blood clouds the water and she fights for her life. Screaming for help, no one is in sight as she succumbs to the shark. It sounds like an all too familiar opening scene but “Shark Night 3D” doesn’t come close to living up to the classic horror film, “Jaws.”
Directed by David R. Ellis, who also directed “Final Destination 1” and “Final Destination 2,” he probably won’t be making a sequel to this film.
Starring Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan and Katharine McPhee, the film is built around a predictable plot, little suspense and no thrill. Together with Chris Carmack, Alyssa Diaz, Joel David Moore, Donal Logue, Sinqua Walls, and Chris Zylka, the college students head to an isolated elegant lake house in Louisiana for a weekend of partying. But the fun ends abruptly when, what looks to be a wake boarding accident, turns into a bizarre shark attack.
Malik (Walls), a star football player, emerges from the salt-water lake missing half his arm and the mood quickly changes as the friends scramble to get him to a nearby hospital off of the island. This proves inevitable as each friend goes down one-by-one, eventually realizing that someone filled the lake with human feasting sharks. And the sheriff obviously has something to do with it.
But all this drama brings little horror and an even more predictable ending.
Aside from the film’s predictability and poor acting, the movie’s scare tactics are very weak. With a PG-13 rating, the gore and action are far from present throughout the film. And the horror was completely cut out of the script.
Besides a few pieces of human flesh flying at the screen and a great white shark showing its razor sharp teeth, wearing the 3-D glasses became more of a nuisance than a thrill. For many scenes there were no shark sightings, rather, a bloody, arm-less Malik takes the place of these fish. Aside from a shark jumping high out of the water and closing in on the kill, the fish are far from a threat.
A few drips of blood coming from the characters’ bodies might be the only disturbing images evident on the big screen. And the only fright comes from the dark, night sky which is the setting of the entire film.
Aside from the far-fetched story line the film is not even close to a shark attack. If you want a thriller that has you on the edge of your seat, “Shark Night 3D” will do anything but scare. It will have you laughing through to the end. Instead, stick to reruns of “Shark Week” on Discovery Channel; at least the real thing will give you nightmares.
