- Directed by David R. Ellis
- Written by Will Hayes, Jesse Studenberg
- Stars Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Chris Carmack
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JniyL2jZH68
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s basic entertainment, and it’s not too bad. There are shark attacks, of course, and there is an attractive cast of victims. Don’t think deeply about the science. But it has enough going for it to be a moderate thumbs up from the Horror Guys.
Synopsis
A couple swim on a beach. The guy gets out for a beer, and the girl is attacked by a shark. She’s pulled around just like the first girl in “Jaws.”
We cut to a university, where Gordon, Nick, and Malik argue about nonsense in their dorm. Malik invites him up to Lake Crosby to celebrate his passing grade. It’s at Sara’s house, so Nick can’t refuse. Malik also plans to propose to Maya this weekend. Blake is a nude model for the art classes. Sara, Maya, and Beth get in the car and they all head to the lake house.
Before they arrive, they all stop at a snack and bait shop. The shopkeeper is creepy. Red, the redneck in the parking lot, is racist, and his friend Dennis has crazy eyes. Sara knows the guy, and they went to high school together. They narrowly avoid a fight.
They take a boat out to where they’re going and get into a chase with the sheriff’s boat. Turns out, the sheriff is one of Sara’s dad’s friends, and he congratulates them for outrunning him. They briefly unpack and get ready to hit the beach. Malik tells Nick that Sara hasn’t dated in three years; she just hangs out with her dog. We get a shark’s POV of the dog swimming…
Malik is an expert water skier, and he shows us what he’s got. The sharks are watching too, and Malik soon loses an arm. Nick’s almost a doctor, so he works on saving Malik’s life. He dives in to find Malik’s severed arm, thinking they ran over him with the boat motor. He finds the arm, but he also finds a shark.
They load Malik into the boat and head back to the mainland. Malik’s bleeding overboard, and the sharks make the boat tip. Maya falls overboard and is eaten. They lose control of the boat and have to bail before they run into the highly explosive gas pump.
That night, Red and Dennis, the rednecks from earlier show up in their boat. They quickly tell the two what happened, and they want to help. They decide to go back to the marina and call for help. Beth and Gordon decide to go along. Red thinks maybe a shark blew into the lake from the hurricane last summer.
Sara tells Nick about a boating accident from her past where she disfigured Dennis, her boyfriend at the time. Distraught Malik grabs a spear with his one good arm and decides to go shark hunting. He spears a hammerhead right in its hammer-head. They find a camera mounted to the dead shark. What?
We see that Dennis and Red are up to no good. They stop the boat and put a sonic thing in the water. Is it a shark beacon? They insist that Gordon get into the water, but he says there are sharks. Red asks, “Who do you think put ‘em there?” Gordon swims to a tree and climbs out, but the great white shark is a good jumper and gets him.
The guys on the boat order Beth to undress, and she stabs Red. Dennis says there are 350 species of shark, and he’s only seen 46. They have been collecting different species of shark in this lake—it had nothing to do with a hurricane. They watch a bunch of little sharks eat Beth.
Meanwhile, Blake and Malik head to the mainland on a jet ski. Malik spots a shark following them and jumps off to sacrifice himself or commit suicide. A gigantic shark leaps out of the water and bites Blake’s head off.
Sheriff Sabin stops over just for a drink and sees the dead shark on the beach. He calls Fish & Game to look into it. Nick faints. Sherman the dog also faints after eating whatever Nick had. Sara overhears Dennis calling the sheriff on his radio—he’s in on it. Dennis arrives and shoots Sara with a tranquilizer gun.
The sheriff takes Nick to torture, while Dennis takes Sara. The sheriff explains that they put cameras on sharks to get footage for TV’s “Shark Week.” He thinks people will pay top dollar for the real thing. Dennis accuses Sara of tearing his face off with a boat motor and then lowers her into the water in a shark cage.
The sheriff gloats a little too hard. Nick sets the sheriff on fire, and the sheriff falls into the water. Chomp! Nick sees Dennis’s boat out a way and jumps into the water to swim there.
Nick puts a pistol to Red’s head and demands that Dennis raise Sara’s cage up. Instead, Dennis stabs Red and throws Dennis overboard. Dennis releases the cage, so Nick has to buddy-breathe with Sara, at least until Dennis attacks him. A shark eats Dennis.
Nick gets a gas cartridge spear and makes the big shark explode. He rescues Sara and they get back on the boat, along with Sherman the dog. We do get one final leaping shark because it’s a cliché and we can’t pass that up.
Commentary
We noticed right off the bat that this was PG-13, which didn’t seem right for this kind of film.
Crosby Lake, Louisiana is a real place, but it’s a freshwater lake, and ocean sharks don’t really do fresh water. Sharks don’t jump like that. This is not a documentary.
The story is about as by-the-numbers and predictable as horror movies get, but it has lots of attractive, wet people in swimsuits. It’s not terrible, and it’s not boring, but watch it for what it is—there won’t be any Academy Awards for this one.