Gotcha! Someone’s going to need a smaller coffin in SHARK NIGHT.
into the cinema of high concepts and low budgets.
The disc from Olive Films, though lacking in any extras, fea- tures a sharp, colorful 1.85:1 transfer with minimal grain. Also available on DVD for $24.95.
SHARK NIGHT
aka SHARK NIGHT 3D 2011, 20th Century Fox, $29.98, 86m 19s, DVD By Shane M. Dallmann
Sara Palski (Sara Paxton) in- vites six of her college friends for a weekend of PG-13 hijinks at her family’s lake house, only to dis- cover that director David R. Ellis has decided to follow SNAKES ON A PLANE with a “Sharks in a Lake” concept, while simulta- neously following THE FINAL DESTINATION with an additional experiment in 3-D.
The most intriguing idea to be found here involves a ring of villains impressed by the con- sistently high ratings of cable’s annual “Shark Week”—they’ve decided to cash-in by selling
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secretly recorded shark attack “snuff” videos to wealthy pa- trons who find the Discovery Channel action insufficient. Un- fortunately, the story of just how they managed to collect 15 dif- ferent species of shark and de- posit them in the (salt water) lake would have been signifi- cantly more interesting than the tale which actually unfolds: far too little time is spent with the unconvincing CGI sharks them- selves than with the “everybody’s in on it” conspiracy to isolate and immerse the all-too-typical party crowd. Predictably, the ringleader has a personal bone to pick with Sara—he’s embit- tered and permanently disfigured after a devastating accident he shared with her in the past. The film does boast one har- rowing sequence involving a school of tiny “cookie-cutter” sharks (most of the would-be- shocks involve the cartoonish “big boys” suddenly leaping from the water and doing every- thing but yelling “Gotcha!”), but Ellis and writers Will Hayes and
Jesse Studenberg inadvertently make more of an impression with their handling of the char- acter Malik. Actor Sinqua Walls certainly doesn’t behave like a racial stereotype, yet somehow he’s contrived to be both the first victim and the self-sacrific- ing hero, while managing to posture with a spear in between! Despite such occasional eye- openers, SHARK NIGHT remains essentially undistinguished. The cited running time does not in- clude a goofy cast/crew music video tacked on after the end credits.
Extras shared by the DVD and Blu-ray ($39.99) editions are the basic handful of glimpses behind the scenes and “real” shark tidbits: the highlight here is a condensation of all of the “shark” footage (barely 5m worth!) in a single serving. To date, a replica of the (reportedly unimpressive) 3-D theatrical version has yet to make it to domestic home video, but has “surfaced” on Blu-ray in Hong Kong.
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