When a movie is shot in 3D to make up for its crappier story, it uses typical 3D horror gimmicks to satisfy the audiences thirst. But people forget that when a movie is released on the home video market that entire experience is practically eliminated and you are left without the joy of 3D and the flair that would have made the movie enjoyable, so is the case with Fox’s latest release, Shark Night.
When Sara and her friends arrive at her family’s Louisiana lake house, they quickly strip down to their swimsuits for a weekend of sexy fun in the sun. But they soon discover the lake is infested with hundreds of flesh-eating sharks — and a few equally dangerous human predators — that turn their killer vacation into a bone-crunching battle to stay alive!
Shark Night stars Sara Paxton (The Innkeepers), Dustin Mulligan, Chris Carmack, Joel David Moore (Dodgeball) and a slew of other relatively unknown actors and actresses. The feature is directed by David Ellis, the man behind The Final Destination and Snakes on a Plane, and is no stranger to the horror/thriller genre, especially when filming in 3D.
The best way to review this film is to compare it to a very similar one, Piranah (2010 version). Piranah was a lot of fun to watch both in 3D and 2D but Shark Night completely skimped out on everything that would have made a campy film like this succeed as much as Piranha did, namely the humor, likable characters and gallons of blood. Much of it comes down to the script and casting selection because without a script that sets up potentially humorous scenes or a cast that can deliver believable or potentially realistic performances you are going to have a movie that fails. While it is clear David Ellis wasn’t going the comedy horror route, that would have been the best bet as this movie tries just too hard and couldn’t even scare an 11 year old girl if one just so happened to be watching it.
The only positive thing I can say about the movie is that they at least did their research when it came to the sharks and actually used quite a variety, which I thought was a nice surprise. That’s all I’ll really say about the feature.
When it comes to the special features, Shark Night has four in total. Shark Attack! Kill Machine! Is simply a replay of all the shark kills that occur in the movie so if all you want to see are the kills then just watch this short featurette. The second feature is Shark Night’s Survival Guide. This feature basically takes you through some of the various kills in the movie and offers up some shark fun facts that you would probably learn during Shark Week, like that most shark attacks occur within 100 feet of the shoreline. The third feature, titled Fake Sharks, Real Scares gives us a nice look at both the animatronic 
sharks and filming with them and the incorporation of digital effects for when the animatronic sharks couldn’t be used. I really liked this feature because the Great White Shark scene was probably the best and seeing the actual robotic shark that they built was pretty cool, it reminded me of Jaws a little bit (but not nearly as epic). The last feature, titled Ellis’ Island, gives the director some face time while on the set to explain how the shoot was going and some of the challenges he faced. It also gives the cast members the opportunity to express their love of David Ellis and why they’d like to work with him again.
Owning this movie on Blu-ray isn’t really worth it unless you have a 3D TV that can convert the film into its original 3D format. I say this because the only reason anybody would ever really want to watch this movie is to see people getting eaten by Sharks in that very medium, or because they really like Sara Paxton. I personally was upset that I couldn’t see this flick in theaters and I’m sure it would have made the experience so much better but unfortunately the CG sharks looked really fake and that is what pissed me off more than anything. If there were other parts of the film I liked I may have been able to overlook this but because I didn’t, this ended up frustrating me to no end.
If you’re a fan of sharks, extremely campy thrillers, or terrible stories then I would recommend checking out Shark Night. It seems like a film that can only be truly appreciated in 3D because so much of its lust is lost in the 2D medium and the lack of the eye popping gimmicks can’t cover up the bad acting, pathetic story and terrible live action and computer graphics blending. This is an all around B rated horror that doesn’t offer up much in the way of scares and cool kills as a fan like me would have hoped for.
Movie Rating: Disappointing all around for a film chock full of viciously cool Sharks (3/10)
Blu-ray Rating: 5.5/10
Shark Night is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Fox Home Entertainment
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