Film Review: SHARK WEEK (2012)

Sharks seem to be the go-to monster for a lot of horror films of the last few years and I guess they’ve run out of titles for their films as evidenced by the generic title for the film Shark Week (2012).  The film surprisingly has a couple of decent actors in Yancy Butler and Patrick Bergin who are slumming in this piece of shit of a horror film. 

Tiburon and his wife (Bergin and Butler, respectfully) have decided to gather a bunch of people together on their private island in order to force them into a gauntlet infested with sharks of all types.  It seems that they are wanting to punish the people responsible for the death of their son and since Tiburon likes sharks why not just have them get eaten one by one in the most entertaining way as possible.

The CGI is inadequate and the acting isn’t much better but I suggest this is more due to the sub par script by Liz Adams and H. Perry Horton.  The actors, at certain points, are not bad but they are saddled with such a cliché story with bad dialogue that they are simply trying to do the best they can do with what they’ve been given.  Bergin is at his worst in this film as he seems asleep at the wheel in this film (he gave a better performance in the abysmal Lawmower Man 2) but Butler (as always) seems to be the only one having any fun in this mess of a film.

Directed by Christopher Ray very little imagination is set forth and even most of the death scenes are off screen or filmed too dark and even if they weren’t marred by bad CGI this film would be a complete waste of time even for audiences that enjoy bad CGI shark movies.

Film Review: LAKE PLACID: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2012)

Actress Yancy Butler returns to battle giant man-eating crocodiles in Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (2012).  Having survived the ordeal of her previous encounter at the infamous lake, Reba (Butler) is now settled with Sheriff Giove (Elisabeth Rohm) with the protection of her town by barricading the growing population of crocodiles from the rest of the world with an electric fence.  Reba would rather just kill them all but it seems that they are now an endangered species and protected from being hunted.  This does not stop big game hunter Jim Bickerman (Robert England) or his group of men who plan to break into the barricaded area in order to steal the valuable eggs of the crocodiles.  When Bickerman’s men accidentally leave the gate to the quarantined area open an school bus of lost and unsuspecting teenagers find their way to the beach where they are the meal of the day for a swarm of crocodiles starving for food. 

It’s great to see Butler back as Reba as she has grown into the roll with her no nonsense attitude towards her job of both protecting the endangered crocodiles and wanting to kill them all.  She has a lot of fun in the roll and every time she’s on the screen she cracks and sizzles.  Rohm is the more subdued of the two and isn’t given as much room to have any fun but she does play the typical mother whose daughter is one of the bus load of teenagers trapped behind enemy lines.  It is England who truly outshines them all as Bickerman a relative of Betty White’s Delores Bickerman from the original 1999 film (so a nice nod there).  He is given free rein to have as much fun as he can in a film that saddled with mediocre CGI crocodile VFX.

The film is written by David Reed (who also wrote Part 3) and directed by Don Michael Paul.  This is a film that knows it’s the fourth film in an ever going franchise of diminishing results (and for those of you counting there is a Lake Placid Vs. Anaconda film on the horizon for this year).  This is not meant to be a good film but I give it points for bringing in some impressive stars and letting them have fun with the mediocre material because if they’re having fun we’re all having fun (and if you make it into a drinking game it’s even more fun).