Ghost Shark (2013)

"It's a shark that's a ghost. Need anything else?"

A lot of people avoid reviewing "Syfy Original" movies, and after watching "Ghost Shark", I can see why. Not only is this one not a patch on "Sharknado", but it doesn't even try to be anything better. "Ghost Shark" is just a lazy piece of made-for-TV filmmaking with no redeeming qualities other than the silliness of its premise and several blatant homages to "Jaws".

Knowing that there's nobody in "Ghost Shark" who I've ever heard of apart from morbidly obese Shawn C. Phillips (aka "Coolduder" from YouTube) should have been my warning not to proceed any further once the "good stuff" in the opening five-minute scene was over, but I foolishly left it playing for company as I clipped my toenails and arranged them in jars. It has to be done, and I came to the conclusion a long time ago that this is the best use for Syfy channel movies anyway.

As expected, the acting in "Ghost Shark" is all over the place, from feeble to mediocre, and the youngest-looking girl mumbles her lines so badly that the movie would benefit from subtitles. For obvious reasons including the budget and casting choices, it looks and feels like a glorified YouTube video, albeit one filmed with high-end equipment. The cheap gore effects and CGI are the only things which are somewhat entertaining in spite of themselves, but this isn't an intentionally made to be "so bad it's good" movie, it's just plain bad.

As usual, there are no characters to care about, the clichéd "teenagers" (several of whom are pushing 30 in real life!) are annoyingly entitled and selfish, and the adults aren't any better. The story is so rushed that none of them are given any time to grieve over their best friends or relatives who've been eaten by the ghost shark, but I doubt that they'd even know how to display those emotions if they were given the chance to.

You're going to need a bigger shed!

The scenes with the ghost shark go from mildly credible (considering the nature of the story) to ludicrous as this Great White doesn't remain in the sea. Taking things several steps too far, our piscine villain pops up in a freshwater swimming pool, comes out of burst pipes, and even leaps out of the rain! Yes, "Ghost Shark" really does exploit the term "jumping the shark" quite literally, which I suppose is kind of the point.

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this crap, but it certainly isn't me. Although I admit to being out of touch with "kids today" and what passes for entertainment in their ADHD world, I don't understand why or how these Syfy movies keep getting made for the two or three hundred people who watch them. I don't think I'll be watching any more.

Durr dumb... durr dumb...

Beneath (2013)

"Six high school seniors celebrating with day's excursion find themselves on rowboat attacked by man-eating fish and must decide who must be sacrificed as they fight their way back to shore."

As much as I would like to write "Beneath" off as nothing but a load of bickering teenagers who you've never heard of (plus Mark Margolis in a creepy cameo) being menaced by a more evil version of the big fish from "The Singing Ringing Tree" (1957), I really can't. For what it is, which is another highly sanitised Chiller TV movie, "Beneath" is far more entertaining than most of the sources it homages, but not in a good way.

Essentially, what director Larry Fessenden has done is rip-off the only good segment of "Creepshow 2", throw in a healthy dollop of "Lifeboat" (or "Lifepod"), and then stir-it all up with some pop culture references, a little bit of social commentary, and even some trendy GoPro camera product placement. All this without any nudity or swearing too! The guy is clearly a genius! Or not, as the case may be.

The biggest problem, other than the ridiculously ginormous piranha-style fish, is that the script isn't very good. The characters are so poorly written that even though you can see that everyone is trying their hardest to act and take it all seriously, there's nothing much for anyone to work with. As a result, there's not one likeable character, and the story becomes little more than a "slasher in water" as you just wait and hope for each annoying idiot to meet his or her demise.

All of them are toast fish food.

The great thing about "Beneath" is that it isn't a comedy. Of course the giant fish is one of the most poorly realised practical creature effects in any movie about giant fish since "Jaws", but as the story progresses, it becomes easier to accept its existence than to believe that the teenagers are really teenagers or were ever friends with each other. Their reactions are more wooden than the bored hosts who used to take the boats of tourists round the "Jaws" ride at Universal Studios, which, alas, is no longer a future employment option for anyone involved in this production.

The gore is surprisingly good for a hypocritical American TV movie with various cuts, bites, slashes, and dismembered limbs oozing blood all over the place. It's not to the same standard as "Piranha 3D", but "Beneath" obviously didn't have the same $24,000,000 budget to play with. I'd be amazed if this movie had even a third of the $1,000,000 budget that The Asylum sets as a maximum for each of their mockbusters.

As with every low-budget abomination nowadays, the camerawork isn't exactly brilliant, and the oh-so-important GoPro inserts make things look even worse. If you can get past that, there's barely any tension in the teenagers' predicament either. There is some, but it's mostly ruined by the stupidity of their childish behaviour. A different director might have got a better balance, but it is what it is. I've got a feeling that Larry Fessenden knew exactly what he was doing. I just can't prove it.

If you're a grumpy old misanthropist like me who is always on the look-out for something else to hate about people, "Beneath" has a lot to say about smartasses, snarkiness, white knighting, entitlement issues, relationships, cliques, and, basically, how disgustingly selfish today's teenagers are. It's almost as good as reading through the online dramas on horror message boards! The only difference is that everyone gets what they deserve this time! And it's glorious! Absolutely glorious!

"Das singende, klingende Bäumchen" has a lot to answer for!

Jaws (1975)

"When a gigantic great white shark begins to menace the small island community of Amity, a police chief, a marine scientist and grizzled fisherman set out to stop it."

I wasn't allowed to see this when it first came out in spite of having only a PG-rating but I read the Peter Benchley books and it wasn't too long before it got shown regularly on TV. I can't remember when I first saw "Jaws" exactly but I know that it gave me a dread of sharks or anything underwater ever since.

I do remember how it scared a lot of people at the time and it even affected holidaymakers who were too scared to go back in the water during the hottest ever British Summer of 1976. It's funny how they could even believe that there might be Great Whites off the coast of Devon and Cornwall but they did! Even in 1983 when I brushed a Basking shark with my foot while swimming in the North Sea where it joins Norfolk, I almost soiled myself! Yeah, I could have gotten such a nasty suck from that thing!

Since then I've been scuba diving and seen sharks of all kinds in aquariums all over the world and they still terrify me. That's the impact of the movie more than any logical reasons whatsoever.

As for "Jaws" now that I'm an adult, I am still in awe of the opening scenes, "My legs! My legs!", and the great performances by everyone involved throughout the entire movie.

Of course, Bruce, the fake shark, looks worse every time I see it but it's still a work of genius and very believable if you don't allow yourself to scrutinize every frame which, unfortunately, due to DVD, is far too easy to do.

For the late Roy Scheider, his role as police chief Martin Brody was undoubtedly the highest point of his career and the most memorable.

Even the usually annoying Richard Dreyfuss actually became quite a sympathetic character for me although I can't say that he would ever have inspired me to become a marine biologist. I do still have aspirations to become even more obnoxious than Robert Shaw's Quint one day but not to end up eaten by a Carcharodon Carcharias.

There's nothing else that I really need to say about "Jaws" as I'm sure that everybody is overly familiar with the film already. It's an exciting, almost timeless, masterpiece.

Steven Spielberg got very lucky with "Jaws" and so did we.