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Shark Attack 2 (2000)

DVD Cover (Lions Gate)
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Overall Rating 32%
Overall Rating
Ranked #6,767
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Genres / Traits: Horror Natural Horror Sharks

Connections: Shark Attack

A biological experiment goes bad, this time releasing a gaggle of mutated great white sharks with a taste for human flesh. Soon enough, shark expert Nick West is on the case, leading a crew to study them and eventually bring them back into captivity. West's plans hit a snag, however, when Australian shark hunter Roy Bishop is called in to wipe out the fishy menace. --TMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: May 31, 2012
After seeing all of the natural horror movies that my fellow reviewer pumped out over the last week or so, I found myself in the mood for some killer shark movies as well. Shark Attack 2 was at the top of the "haven't seen and hasn't been reviewed" list, and even though I knew that it was going to be bad, I settled in and hoped for the best. After all, what could go wrong while watching the sequel to a movie that made me say "I'm done with shark movies for a good long while"?

There is a ten second section of dialogue that tries to connect this to the first film, but otherwise, there's no real connection besides "sharks are eating people." I guess you're not in this for the riveting storyline, but I thought I should throw that out there. This one follows Dr. Nick Harris (Thorsten Kaye), a man who works at the local aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa, and also a man who has captured a great white shark to be displayed at said aquarium. He wasn't too fond of the idea, but his boss (Danny Keogh) gave him little say in the matter, so there you have it. However, things go bad on the grand opening of this shark exhibit when a man is dragged into the shark tank and eaten alive in front of dozens of spectators. As if that wasn't bad enough, getting a taste of human flesh somehow allows the shark to escape back into the open sea, and Nick sets out to catch and kill it.

Accompanying him will be Samantha Peterson (Nikita Ager), a young lady whose sister was also killed by this very shark, while Nick's now-former boss has hired television personality Steve Irwin - excuse me, Roy Bishop (Dan Metcalfe) - to do the same. After all, it wouldn't look good if the killer shark was dealt with by a former employee, now would it? It is soon discovered that these sharks are mutants, and that they are the offspring of sharks that had been injected with steroids and various other chemicals. In short: they're highly aggressive, they travel in packs, and they have a taste for human flesh.

Let's just get this out of the way right up front: Shark Attack 2 is not a very good movie. It is padded to hell and back, it rips off Jaws in more ways than I cared to count, and there are various other problems that dragged my score down at every turn. However, I do have a soft spot in my heart for utter cheese, and this movie delivered that and then some. Yes, this is one of those movies that is bad in every conceivable way, but somehow, I found myself getting a moderate amount of enjoyment out of it in spots.

Everybody picks these movies up for the sharks, so let's jump to that aspect of the film first, shall we? The shark attacks start out horribly, to be blunt about it. The first two attacks follow the same formula: mix together footage of a diver in the water with stock footage of a shark swimming around, violently shake the camera around like a dog tearing apart a chew toy, and then put a red tint on the entire affair to simulate blood. They are extremely disappointing to say the least.

However, things do start to pick up after those two kills. There are a few that mix together footage like that with much better results, and there are also some animatronic sharks used to actually bring the humans into contact with the beasts on screen. I'd be lying if I said that they were perfect, but with the exception of a few scenes towards the end of the film, they did look pretty damned good. You'll never mistake them for the real thing, but unless this is the first low-budget film that you've ever seen, you really can't bitch about them either.

The surrounding storyline is what really drags the movie down. As mentioned, we've already seen a lot of it in Jaws, but there's also the obligatory love story thrown in for whatever reason. Who decided that every low budget shark movie had to have a love connection that is developed over the course of the running time? We didn't come for the romance, we came for the freaking sharks.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the movie is chock full of outdated and corny movie clichés. There is a montage sequence with R&B music over it used to develop the aforementioned love connection, there are a handful of slow-motion scenes where the hero runs to save somebody, and a large portion of the dialogue was dubbed over in post, resulting in a movie that at times reminded me of those old imported kung fu flicks. I'm not even going to go into detail about the roaring sharks; I'll just leave it at "roaring sharks" and let you use your imagination.

Dragging the movie down even more is the acting. Nikita Ager is pretty good in her role - she was by no means great, but I couldn't complain either. However, she was miles above everybody else in the movie, and there were times when Thorsten Kaye was downright painful to watch. I know that you don't pick up a movie like this for award-winning acting, but when it's this bad, you just can't help but be disappointed. I'll also give a nod to the anonymous lady who showed her boobs for five seconds in a completely random scene that came out of nowhere and was only inserted so that the distributors could truthfully claim that the DVD contains the unrated cut.

Still, with all its flaws, I'm going to give this one an average rating. It was semi-enjoyable courtesy of the occasional shark attack scene that was well done, and even though I did spend ninety percent of the review bitching about various things, I have definitely seen worse in every category. So, here's the deal: I'm going with a 6/10, but knock off a couple of points if you don't like cheesy b-movies, and knock off a few more points if you require great acting or a smart storyline.
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