HEY GUESS WHAT IT’S SHARK WEEK. ALSO I HAVE TWITTER NOW. @SciFridays

Is this not the chubbiest, cutest little shark?

As you may or may not know, I’ve watched a lot of shark movies. So many, in fact, that it was kind of difficult to pick a new one for beloved ‘Shark Week’ on Discovery Channel this week.

In fact, Shark Movies I’ve seen (that I can remember), in no particular order:

• Jaws 1-3
• Shark Attack 1-3 (including the infamous ‘Megalodon’
• Blue Steel
• Deep Blue Sea
• Mega-Shark v. Giant Octopus
• Mega-Shark v. Dinocroc
• Spring Break Shark Attack
• Hammerhead
• 2-Headed Shark Attack
• Malibu Shark Attack
• Shark Alarm (Haialarm auf Mallorca)
• Shark in Venice
• Sharknado
• Shark Week
• Swamp Shark
• Shark Night
• Sand Sharks
• The Reef
• Bait
• Red Water

So as you can see, it doesn’t leave of unwatched movies (believe me, I looked). I might be single, and a graduate student slave and relatively broke all the time, but damnit, watching a lot of Shark movies is going to boost my resume. This brings me to this week’s movie. 

Nu Image Films

Baddie: Littering aliens

Lesson: Please budget your money appropriately.

I settled on ‘Raging Sharks’, because, y’know. Space sharks. This is one of those movies where I get ridiculously amped in the first ten minutes. There are aliens, and spaceships, and collisions, and an oil tanker explodes, and there’s a deep sea laboratory because why not!? AND Corbin Bernsen is in it! There’s even some gender role reversal. It’s nuts.

Here’s the thing. Do you know what profession I will never, ever, ever have? Deep-sea welder. Not in a million years.

Ah yes, clear dialogue in diving respirators. Classic. Shallow shots of sharks/divers despite being in the deep sea? Missing eyeballs on cadavers? WHAT? Are they really tiny, delicate surgeon sharks? Apparently it only takes about 20 minutes to get from the Bermuda Triangle to Boston, by the way.

Really the main problem with this movie is that they don’t seem to know how to budget things. I don’t know how expensive documentary footage is, but there’s a lot of it (only occasionally repeated). There’s an animatronic shark head, several sunken boats, several miniature models and some fairly involved sets (inside a submarine, a deep sea lab, etc.). I’m also pretty sure there’s an actual shark being autopsied. And yet, the editing is so sloppy sometimes that a woman repeats a line from a different angle. Most of the women in this movie are so haphazardly made up that they look like Russian hookers. CPR is performed horribly wrong.

Nu Image Films
Also, chinstrap. Really.

Despite them stating “There are at least 12 different sharks out there” they all appear to be great whites. Also they roar. Like lions. Consistently. I used to think it was really cute in a shark movie when the sound editor slips in a little roar in a shark attack. Subtle, like you might not notice it, but it’s there. Raging Sharks takes the ‘sharks are noisy’ approach. Speaking of sound, no one can pronounce the name of the deep sea lab. Oceana? Oceona? Then again, we don’t even know what they’re studying. ‘The Ocean,’ says the smart aleck.

Nu Image Films
Pictured: Smart Aleck. Studying science.

The subtlety of this movie leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a simple premise: alien mineral makes sharks crazy. Sharks begin swarming. However, that means that whenever someone goes into the water, they’re pretty much dead. There’s not a lot of suspense, or build up. Just, water, and sharks.

That being said, I do like my shark movies with a side of secret-agent double-crossing murders. I could, however, do without the forty minutes of sharkless violence.

If you got this far in the review, here’s my treat to you.

My favorite moment in a shark movie EVER. Watch the whole thing. You will not be disappointed.