The story goes that the reason you didn’t see more of the shark in Jaws was because the mechanical chomper didn’t work most of the time. It ended up being a strength. Perhaps a low budget reduced the screentime of the shark in this one, but you don’t miss it.
We open pre-title during World War II with the sinking of the warship USS Charlotte. Flash forward to the present-day Caribbean Sea, where salty diver Levi (Julian Sands, in his last appearance before dying), an aging expat running a tourist dive business in the British Virgin Islands, has been on a career-long pursuit of shipwrecks.
Joined by recent college dropout Noah (Jack Parr), they find it! After 80 years, the USS Charlotte emerges for the first time after a tropical storm. Noah is ecstatic and plans to return the next day.
Enter Noah’s friends visiting the island to get drunk and to go on a once-in-a-lifetime dive on the newly discovered wreck before it’s handed over to the authorities.
Well, guess who’s swimming round the insides of the hull? That’s right, a shark who, like all movie sharks, is angry and specifically determined to go after these specific actors.
But you’ll have to wait.
The film is presumably winding up the spring for the first half of the runtime before getting to the real action in the second act. They really could have tightened up the pacing. We don’t need to be held in suspense. It’s a shark movie, bro.
The good news is that palpable suspense comes from devices that don’t include the shark, namely running dangerously low on oxygen and being lost inside the massive ship. Or having the super strong line that the divers can follow back to the entrance – the line that is so strong it never breaks- snap like a strand of thread? That happens and it works as a useful trope.
Don’t worry, there will be some severed limbs and some close calls, and, really, the things you expect from a genre film. The cast are competent and director Joachim Hedén has experience making underwater films, so it’s a decent way to spend 90 minutes if you like this kind of B-movie thing.
In Theaters and Everywhere You Rent Movies July 26, 2024
