Sharks 3D sucks

By Brian Biekman     9/7/11 7:00pm

Director David R. Ellis' (Snakes on a Plane) Shark Night 3D pays homage to the teenage slasher flicks of the '80s and the "scary things in the water" movies of the '70s by copying every shot, character and plot line from these films — without an original idea of its own. It leaves no cliche untouched and no woman unobjectified.

Shark Night 3D opens with a shot from a shark's point of view of a skinny blonde, Jess (Christine Quinn, Humans versus Zombies), walking in shallow water. Why is she walking rather than swimming? So that viewers can see her butt bouncing when she inexplicably jumps up and down in the water. In fact, there are three close-ups of a skinny girl's butt in the first 20 minutes. Anybody who's seen Jaws knows what's coming next. She twitches in the water, but instead of a shark ripping her to shreds, her boy toy with washboard abs, Keith (Damon Lipari, 51), lifts her out of the water. What a twist! Keith walks to the shore, Jess gets back in the water and then the shark rips her to shreds.

The film then moves to a group of college kids who are heading to a lake for the same reason all characters in dead teenager movies go to the lake: to get drunk and hook up. Ellis uses as many teenager flick stock characters as possible. Sara (Sara Paxton, The Innkeepers) is the hot, innocent blonde who is afraid to fall in love. Nick (Dustin Milligan, Eva) is the nerdy guy who has a thing for Sara. Beth (Katharine McPhee, who's most famous for being the runner up in "American Idol") is Sara's slutty friend. Malik (Sinqua Walls, "Savage County") is the token black guy from the ghetto, destined to be an NFL star. Ellis could further develop these characters, but that would take away from the time used for sharks to gobble up teens.

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The sharks themselves are not believable at all. The CGI looks like it was designed on basic software, and the 3D effect is uninspired: twice a shark jumps six feet in the air to eat a college kid. It only has one main use in the movie: to let dead college kids' blood and guts fly at the viewer.

Even more appalling than the 3D, CGI, screenplay and all the cliches combined is Shark Night 3D's shameless exploitation of women. In one scene, the viewer watches Beth pee in a gas station bathroom while she talks to Sara about the cute boys on the trip. At the same time, the cashier is watching them on a security camera with a creepy smile. Later on, two rednecks (Donal Logue, Charlie St. Cloud, and Joshua Leonard, Prom Night) force Beth to strip to her bra and panties. Every female character takes off her top at least once. Somehow this movie is rated PG-13.

Ellis' Snakes on a Plane works because it knows it's stupid and cliche, making a movie so bad that it's funny (Also, big names like  Samuel L. Jackson's don't hurt). However, with Shark Night 3D, Ellis tries to make a seriously scary teenager flick, but the film's blatant predictability undermines that. Toward the end of the movie, the rednecks feed Beth to "Isistius brasiliensis, also known as the cookiecutter shark." With that quotation in mind, a much more fitting title for this movie is Shark Night 3D, also known as the Cookiecutter Film.

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