Shark Night is a boring waste of time in which a group of people without personalities wander off camera and get eaten by a bunch of bad CGI. It drags down with it Joel David Moore, who amongst the group comes closest to having character traits and is also the only person involved in this film who can act. Some day he’ll end up with the kind of role he deserves, but for now he’s stuck in Shark Night 3D where the idiots survive and no one seems to figure out that humans with shark teeth cannot be trusted.
The worst thing about this movie is Sarah Paxton who, tasked with playing a character who mostly stands around and stares blankly, can’t seem to figure out where she is. You’d think it would help that her character’s also named Sarah and that the film doesn’t really give her many lines, in spite of being the movie’s lead, but it doesn’t. She seems as lost as the movie itself. Sarah’s really to blame for everything that goes on in this movie. She drags her college friends out to the lavish lake house where she grew up, where exactly what you’d expect to happen in a movie called Shark Night would happen, except a lot of it happens in the day time.
Some of it does happen at night though and no one seems to be able to figure out how not to be eaten by sharks. These aren’t land sharks we’re talking about, or even the fresh water variety. Just your run of the mill sharks, except maybe a little faster, we’re talking Jet Ski speed beasties here. All anyone really has to do is stay out of the water, but that’s too much to ask for, particularly when there’s more going on here than a couple of tiger sharks and a hammerhead.
At one point the movie actually cribs the iconic theme song to Jaws. I’d have been more offended by this if Jaws hadn’t eventually spawned a bunch of equally awful sequels, one of which was even in 3D. There’s nothing new here, just the usual bad shark movie stuff, except done with far worse special effects, scripting, and characters than it has ever been done with before. Oh and most of the shark munching happens off camera. Shark attacks are brutal and this movie’s rated PG-13. They can’t actually show those pointy teeth sinking into human flesh at that rating, but they can show you a lot of people falling into the water and half-heartedly screaming. Eat them already, I’m bored.
For an in-depth, factual analysis of Shark Night's 3D read To 3D Or Not To 3D.
