Co-eds & Cajuns: LFM Mini-Review of Shark Night 3D

By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Riffing off last year’s surprise cult hit Piranha 3D, Rogue Pictures cross-breeds Jaws with Deliverance to create Shark Night 3D – an energetic genre quickie that follows a pack of sexy, edible college students as they navigate a nightmarish evening along Louisiana’s backwaters, dodging voracious sharks and insane Cajuns.

THE SKINNY: Though not half as wild or excessive as Piranha, the surprisingly satisfying Shark Night delivers plenty of thrills, bikinis and even some unexpected satire – while turning Lake Pontchartrain into one of the creepiest cinema backwaters since Boggy Creek.

WHAT WORKS: • The film’s remote Louisiana locations create an unnerving and slightly bizarre atmosphere – an upside-down, backwoods world in which the otherwise ludicrous storyline of shark-fueled Cajun revenge against fancy college kids actually makes (some) sense.

• Sara Paxton delivers a surprisingly credible performance as the lead co-ed, given that she spends the entire film either in an eye-popping cyan bikini or covered in fish-gore.

• It’s hard not to love the film’s colorful, freakish Cajuns – one of whom has teeth sharpened like a possum, another of whom quotes Nietzsche (“It’s beyond good and evil!”) while describing his bizarre, money-making scheme to … ***SPOILER WARNING*** … live-webcast college students being eaten by sharks. ***END OF SPOILERS*** These backwater charismatics give the film a slightly Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe.

• The 3D is excellent, with the film having been shot natively in that format. The underwater scenes in particular look frothy and alive.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: • The film’s lead bad-guy, as played by male model Chris Carmack, is too much of a pretty boy and seems out of place among the ragin’ Cajuns.

• There’s far too much build-up in getting to know the various college kids, none of whom are all that interesting and most of whom are chowder by film’s end.

• The sharks look a little too nimble and digital. I miss the days when movie sharks were bulky, slow and rubber.

• For much of the film, the sharks seem smarter than the college kids. Then again, perhaps that was the point.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The basic fun of Shark Night, its biggest surprise, is that the behavior of the human villains is far more outrageous and ruthless than anything the sharks can muster. In the dog-eat-dog world of today’s economy, the film seems to be saying, it’s amazing what some people will do to get a head. Or to get an arm. Or a leg.

(Incidentally, Shark Night is rated PG-13, and most of the film’s violence and nudity are merely implied. This film doesn’t even come close to the bacchic excesses of Piranha, which probably deserved an NC-17.)

There have been some great underwater creature features over the years, from the 3D Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954, to Jaws and The Deep in the 1970s, to last year’s Piranha (see my review here; Piranha 3DD, with David Hasselhoff and Gary Busey, comes out November 23rd). Shark Night is definitely a minor entry in this genre, but it holds its own.

What’s surprising is that the people behind this unassuming little thriller thought to supplement their toothy sharks with creepy human characters, backwater Cajuns apparently suffering from a major case of class envy. These Cajuns ridicule and sneer at the college kids, and it’s hard to blame them given the way these supposedly brainy kids walk (or swim) right into one obvious trap after another. Shark Night indulges in a certain amount of satire directed not only at the rustic Cajuns, with their outrageous and gruesome money-making scheme, but also toward naive city kids who are useless outside of their safe, academic/urban environments. The same kids who seem hip on their Tulane University campus early in the film – lazily playing Halo, indulging in loose sex talk, and planning their lucrative post-collegiate careers – get ripped to pieces out in the ‘real’ world, fooled at every turn by their cagey Cajun rivals. It’s not exactly Tennessee Williams material, but Shark Night knows when to amplify the terror of the sharks with a dash of class warfare – all to juicy, amusing effect.

I haven’t had the chance to visit Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina, although I’ve been very eager to get back. I think I’ll stick to the cities, though. Those Cajun guys look too clever for me, and I wouldn’t want to end up as some shark’s gumbo.

Posted on September 3rd, 2011 at 2:43pm.