The WTF? Worst Films Extravaganza Presents: Shark Attack 2 (2001)

DIRECTED BY
David Worth

STARRING
Thorsten Kaye - Dr. Nick Harris
Nikita Ager - Samantha Peterson
Dan Metcalfe - Roy Bishop
Caroline Burns - Amy Peterson
Danny Keogh - Michael Francisco
Rob van Vuuren - Daryl Waker
Warrick Grier - Morton

Genre - Thriller/Horror/B-Movie/Sharks

Running Time - 92 Minutes


PLOT
A crooked business owner named Michael Francisco (Danny Keogh) is opening a new aquarium in South Africa called Water World. He learns that a dangerous great white shark is living inside of an inlet. Wanting to capture it for an exhibit, Francisco hires Dr. Nick Harris (Thorsten Kaye), a marine biologist, to capture it for his aquarium. Nick successfully captures the shark, helping Francisco make it his star attraction.

During Water World's grand opening, tragedy occurs when a worker falls into the great white shark's tank and gets eaten in front of an audience of kids and their parents. Not only that, but the shark manages to escape Water World during the attack. Not wanting to take the blame himself, since he was the one who forced this worker to feed the shark in front of an audience, Francisco fires Nick. Without any sort of authority, Nick takes it upon himself to capture the shark before it hurts anyone else.

During Nick's mission, he encounters a woman named Samantha (Nikita Ager), whose sister was murdered by this shark during a scuba diving activity. Wanting revenge on the shark, Samantha decides to help Nick. However, Francisco finds out what Nick and Samantha are up to, wanting to capture the shark for himself. He hires an Australian television host named Roy Bishop (Dan Metcalfe) to find and kill the shark, who plans to film it all for ratings and publicity. As the hunt for the shark begins, Nick and Samantha realize that there may be more than just one great white around, all suffering from some genetic enhancing that makes them more deadly than ever.

REVIEW

I got three words for SHARK ATTACK 2:

WHAT THE FUCK!?

HITS

- Thorsten Kaye and Nikita Ager. SHARK ATTACK 2 isn't a good movie in any stretch of the imagination, but at least the two leads try to carry the film as best as they can. Thorsten Kaye, who would be more popular in the soap opera world for his time on the now-cancelled All My Children, is better than he should be as Nick Harris. While the dialogue is dull and sometimes terrible, at least Kaye tries to make it work and convey the right level of emotion for each scene. I honestly got the 'hero' vibe from him and I thought his performance was pretty good. As for Nikita Ager, she was decent as the female lead/love interest. She looked better than she could act, but at least she took her role seriously. Kaye and Ager were the two actors in the film that didn't annoy me in anyway throughout this bland sequel.

- A couple of good scenes. SHARK ATTACK 2 manages to be better than the first one due to a couple of scenes that are actually executed pretty damn well. The first scene is the grand opening of Water World, where the worker who's feeding the great white shark is killed by that very shark. It's nothing really special, but it's memorable because it's the first major scene of violence [not counting the death of Samantha's sister, which is okay] that sets up the rest of the story. It's also quite tense and effective, as the children are horrified by this man's death while Michael Francisco quietly panics at the situation. It's a scene that needed to be in the film because it moves the rest of the narrative along, and it's done logically well.

The other scene is the beach scene, where the escaped great white shark attacks beachgoers, including two of Nick's surfer buddies. It's obviously inspired [or stolen] by JAWS, which a lot of the same visual cues [Nick noticing the shark before everyone else, Nick warning others to get out of the water, etc.], but it's done really well. It's done seriously and watching random characters panic builds tension in a good way. Plus, some people actually get hurt and/or killed here, so the scene manages to mean something. Yes, the Spielberg film does the scene better obviously. But they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And SHARK ATTACK 2 does a pretty decent imitation. Probably the best scene in the entire film, which isn't saying much.

- Roaring sharks. This should probably be in the MISSES section. After all, sharks don't roar and it sounds pretty damn silly when they do. But I couldn't help but laugh anytime a shark would leap out and roar like a lion [which is the actual sound the filmmakers used]. Unintentional comedy works here because this film really needed more entertainment value. I'll take what I can get at this point.


MISSES

- The rip-off, I mean, the story. SHARK ATTACK 2's biggest issue is how unoriginal and predictable it is. Now in this day and age, a film has trouble being both original and unpredictable because we've pretty much seen it all already. I have no issues with that as long as the film is done reasonably well. Unfortunately, SHARK ATTACK 2 would rather just settle in stealing ideas from most of the JAWS films and stitching the greatest hits as some sort of narrative. Water World is obviously based on JAWS 3D. The beach scene was taken from JAWS. The two divers at the beginning of the film was done in JAWS 2. Add in a character that's obviously based on Steve Irvin, the late Crocodile Hunter, and some love story elements and you got SHARK ATTACK 2. Nothing more, nothing less.

It would have been nice if the filmmakers had used these "inspirations" in more unique, or even interesting, ways. But not much is done with any one of these to make them stand out from the shadow of better films [whether JAWS 3D is a better film than SHARK ATTACK 2 is debatable at this point]. This would be okay if everything else in the film was better than these moments, but it's just generic and pedestrian.

The love story doesn't work because the two actors don't have much chemistry with each other. Plus it happens so fast that you'll miss their attraction if you blink! It's not believable and totally forced. I mean, a killer shark is out there and sex is on the brain?? Wow, they really want to catch this thing! The shark hunter guy is supposed to be the antagonist of the film, but he's just annoying and doesn't really become enough of a presence to be any sort of threat to the two leads. Even Michael Francisco ends up being a bland villain because he's only one-note and is just there to set up the hunt for the great white. None of the characters here are all that interesting, which makes it difficult for a viewer to give a shit about anything that's happening on screen.

The dialogue is also very badly written. The characters all sound the same and what they say never resonates long enough. I couldn't even tell you what these characters were discussing with each other now that I think about it. It's just so generic. The dialogue never really reveals any of the character's personalities. They all sound like robots forced into stereotypical roles to complete a narrative. Nothing in the story ever seems to happen naturally. The only thing I did like was that it somewhat connects to the first SHARK ATTACK when it comes to the sharks. Other than that, this script is a lame duck.

- The direction. David Worth, who directed 1989's cult classic KICKBOXER starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, seems to be bored by the screenplay as well since the visual presentation is dull as fuck. Besides the two scenes I mentioned earlier in the HITS section, the rest of the film just drags. There's no atmosphere. There's not much thrills. The photography looks cheap, like a TV show. The editing is off more than once. The use of cheesy love songs just makes you want to turn the film off rather than enhance the supposed love arc. The visuals were as boring as the narrative. Maybe I should give David Worth points for consistency. But if the screenplay is terrible, then you should have interesting visuals to compensate for that. SHARK ATTACK 2 fails at even that. The film feels like a 92-minute Baywatch episode without the hot female lifeguards running down the beach in slow motion. Without that, who's going to care?

David Worth would return to direct SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON, which will be the next shark flick I'll be covering. At least I'll have more positive words for him there for creating one of the best-worst films ever.

- Terrible dubbing. So SHARK ATTACK 2 is supposedly a South African production, where the story actually takes place as well. So why would most of the actors be dubbed with American accents? It makes no sense to me. Besides Thorsten Kaye and Dan Metcalfe, who are German and Australian respectively, everyone else sounds American. In South Africa. Who's bright idea was this? There is nothing wrong with an actor having a local accent. I don't understand the mentality for any reason to dub these actors. If it was to make the film unintentionally funny, then the filmmakers failed hard. I just found it ridiculous.

- The CGI. As a low budget film, I understand that SHARK ATTACK 2 wouldn't have the best special effects. I expected the use of stock footage, which is used better here than in the first SHARK ATTACK. I expected CGI sharks underwater, like in DEEP BLUE SEA [they look just as fake here than they did in that film]. But the model shark was just really bad. It just looks so incredibly fake, you can't help but laugh at how silly it is. I mean, the mouth doesn't even move! It has no movement as it swims! It's just bad. It's rare for the special effects to look convincing enough, but they're not visually pleasing for majority of the film. Plus, the main shark is supposed to have one eye [it was stabbed in the beginning of the film by Samantha], but I could have sworn it still had two most of the time. Well if you don't care about that major detail, then I won't care about liking your film, filmmakers.


THE FINAL HOWL

While it's an improvement over the horrible SHARK ATTACK, this sequel is still pretty bad in itself. The direction is dull, the narrative stinks, the CGI is bad, and the awful dubbing just left me scratching my head. At least some of the actors were decent and some of the scenes were shot above average. Not the worst shark film I've seen, but still worthy enough to be captured and sent to the shark tank inside the WTF? Vault. I would rather be fed to the sharks than watch this film ever again.

SCORE

1 Howl Outta 4