Shark Week: Swamp Shark

Welcome back readers to even more Shark Week so buckle up, this is bound to get bumpy.  SyFy Channel seems to be churning out more and more creature features but they seem to have a disturbing love for shark based movies and since the populous is not arguing against that we have yet another feature to review.  So gas up your swamp boats, bring more ammo than the National Guard and get some!  This is Swamp Shark.

 

TOKEN! NOoOoOOOOOO!!!

You telling me we got a spoiler deep in the Bayou?

The swamplands of the Atchafalaya Basin are open for the summer and all the teeny boppers roaming about set for the big Gator Fest weekend.  Unbeknownst the locals and party goers, an entrepreneur has made purchase of a very large sea creature for his collection.  Millionaires are all crazy like.   A fiasco occurs during the delivery, killing the drivers and the creature escapes in the swampy river.

Parents, this is most of the college money right there.

At the Bouchard’s Gator Shed restaurant a local drunk is hauled out by Jason Bouchard (Jeff Chase of Dexter, Burn Notice, Chuck, Star Trek, The Spy Next Door and The Mechanic.  Little sister Krystal (Sophia Sinise of CSI: NY, Fear Not and The Heart of Christmas) longs to graduate and leave this Godforsaken town. Our drunk is found mangled to bits and bits later and the town sheriff (Robert Davi of Die Hard, The Profiler, License to Kill, Maniac Cop 2, Maniac Cop 3 and Stargate: Atlantis) attributes the death to a pack of gators kept at Bouchard’s and deems the whole kit and caboodle is to be locked up and the gators need to be whacked. 

Rachel Bouchard (Kristy Swanson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Chase, Big Daddy, Dude, Where’s My Car, Soul Assassin and Silence) claims to have seen a creature in the waters that had a fin on its back and of course the sheriff scoffs at this.   She, her brother, flirty boyfriend Tyler (Richard Tanne of 2001 Maniacs, Knifepoint and The Nine Lives of Chloe King) and Tommy (D.B. Sweeney of The Cutting Edge, Fire in the Sky, Strange Luck and Dinosaur) attempt a search and destroy against the shark but failed in the attempt and Tyler peels the boat away from said creature.  Further down the river is a little party boat rented by those darn kids with their fornication and boozing it up and a couple get eaten by something that cannot be mistaken for anything but a shark.

Sheriff, Charlie Sheen is in the gator pit...Again!

I just have a few points about the film.  The action scenes are pretty well done with a fabricated prop shark and the underwater 35 mm Digital Panaflex really captured scenes well.  Our creature is NOT CGI for a change, giving it far more creditability.   The script could have used a bit of tweaking in the standing of the breed of the shark and where it originated by that isn’t touched base on. 

Our actors do a surprisingly good job with a creature feature film of this absurd nature.   All in all this was actually a fun flick.  Very little digital enhancement  done to this film other than to the print so for a goofy time, a few beers and a crowd for bad movie night, load this one up in your DVD or Blu-Ray.