Despite what 30 Rock’s Tracey Jordan says, you cannot live every week like it’s Shark Week. No life deserves to be that joyous. You can, however, live every Shark Week like it’s, uh, Shark Week, so in honor of Discovery’s most sacred seven days of programming, this edition of MindFood is also going to cherish this beast of the high seas. (Note: the shark is not, as often described, the king of the ocean. We all know that title belongs to the Kraken.)
So I’d like to take this time to get into the spirit of Shark Week, to only cherish and honor this lethal fish. So, with that optimism, I shall follow the golden rule and only say good things about the following eight films, almost all of which I would normally only ever say bad, bad things about.
Malibu Shark Attack
Oh, Malibu Shark Attack, how I fell in love with you when Syfy first announced you. Back then you were called Goblin Shark Attack and you boasted an excellent plot about people who had to survive the deep sea devils after a tsunami flooded the shore of a coastal town, bringing with it a pack of ancient goblin sharks. Most people would probably make fun of how painfully mediocre your CGI sharks are or how worn down and “I wish I wasn’t making this movie” Peta Wilson looks, but I think those are just the aces up your sleeve that reveal your inner vulnerabilities.
Sharks in Venice
Any other week of the year, I’d declare Sharks in Venice to be an absolutely worthless film and one of Syfy’s biggest missed opportunities. But...staying positive...I thought it was a very audacious move to name your movie Sharks in Venice and then proceed to make a movie that rarely had sharks in it and was actually an Indiana Jones-esque search for something hidden in the waterways beneath Venice. I applaud your real life trolling.
Deep Blue Sea
I don’t need to pretend that the only reason I’m saying anything positive about Deep Blue Sea is because it’s Shark Week. I love this damned beauty during the 51 other weeks of the year, too. You arrived just at the turning point when a lot of lower budgeted creature features were going all CGI, but you actually have a number of practical effects on set, which I’m always a fan of. Plus, not only does your script have a shark using someone’s body to smash open a window, but it also has Samuel L. Jackson getting absolutely pawned at the height of his pep talk. Oh, and LL Cool J? His head is like a shark’s fin.
Hammerhead
Shark FrenzyI wish you had the balls to market yourself under your alternate, and far more accurate, title of SharkMan, but I still love you Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy because you combined a freakin’ hammerhead shark with a human in order to make one of the most useless, and thus most awesome, villains ever. And not only that, but the one man in the movie who can love SharkMan for what he is? Jeffrey Combs. Winner.
Dinoshark
I’m a little disappointed that a movie called Dinoshark features a creature that really looks like it has no shark mixed in it, but I’m also no dino-ologist, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume that your titular killer is 100% accurate to the fossil record. Plus, you’ve got Eric Balfour as your head dinoshark hunter, which I love because Balfour himself has quite the unique head. His elongated face looks like the face on a penny after its been placed on some train tracks, and that’s just not something you see enough of from leading men in Hollywood.
Open Water
Don’t worry, Open Water, I still remember when you first came out and people took you seriously. I’m also willing to preserve that memory and forget that people nowadays can barely stand to watch you because “nothing ever happens” and “the camera movement makes them violently ill”. I also admire how you gave us the phrase, “It’s like Open Water, but with...” to describe better movies that use the “couple trapped in one spot, fending off nature to survive” formula.
Shark Attack 3
Shark Attack 3, you may be one of the worst killer shark movies ever made, but because of that you’ve been given a gift to share with the world: endless YouTube videos featuring your silly antics. I’m a big fan of how your shark, which is this bizarre effect wherein the shark is real and the people are the element that is green screened in, is defiantly incapable of remaining the same size in two consecutive shots. Watching you is like watching some avant garde art installation meant to challenge our need for spatial relations.
Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus
I hate you, Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. I hate you all weeks of the year. And now I hate you even more because you’re making me break the sacred, I-just-made-it-up tenement of Shark Week that only good things must be said of bad shark movies. But I just can’t muster any positive thoughts when I know how pathetically you squandered the potential of a movie that is called Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. It shouldn’t be that hard to do, really. The title is the entire damned movie! But no, The Asylum had to do what they always do with excellent titles, and only put in about 10 cumulative minutes of the actual Mega Shark and Giant Octopus and stretch them thin across a painful 85 minutes of stupid humans trying to figure out how fraked they are. Not cool.