Swim

Tubi is one of my favorite ways to watch movies that I can't find anywhere else, so why not check out one of their first attempts at original content? It compares itself to one of my favorite recent creature features. Surely that's a good sign!

Yeah, this was another movie where the trailer lied to me. Either that or I completely missed that it was an Asylum film. But in my defense, the trailer was really good! It managed to fit in all of the decent line readings and somehow made the CGI look better than it actually was!

I'm not even being that snarky. I wish that I watched the movie the trailer showed instead. It looked like a lot of fun. Alas, this is exactly what you expect out of a lesser Asylum film. Bad CGI. Nonsensical plot. Horrible acting. But a fun time if you go into it knowing what to expect and don't ask too many questions of the plot.

There's nothing here to take seriously (even if the movie takes itself incredibly seriously.) A family goes to their beach house to start their annual summer vacation. A big storm occurs. House floods. Shark gets into the house and eats a bunch of people. It's really all you need in this kind of movie.

There's not really a lot that I can say about it beyond that. Jennifer Field, who played the mom, had this one expression for about 80% of the movie which was just her jaw unhinged like she was in The Scream painting. It was very goofy.

The kills overall were fairly average. Almost all of them were entirely underwater, out of focus, and cut away from before anything got too graphic. Still, I did enjoy the handyman's death. There was an element of cat and mouse to it that was somewhat tense as opposed to just eye roll worthy. There also was one shot of a dead body that looked pretty good. I appreciated that.

So, I walked away with several questions. I know, I know. I said that you can't ask too many questions about these kinds of movies. I still had them.

First off: How old was the grandfather supposed to be? The actor was 56 years old at the time, but the movie treated him like he was 96 instead. Or maybe he had some kind of lung condition? He had an oxygen tank, and his physical frailty was a pretty major plot point. It was very distracting.

Second set of questions: how the heck did these families not know that they were in the path of a major storm? If I was going to a beach house for a month, I would know if a hurricane was going to hit and that my house was in an evacuation zone. These things don't just show up out of nowhere! But I also don't know if it actually was a hurricane or not. Hudson mentioned that there was rain in San Francisco they live in and that it was moving south. I repeat: how did they not know about this weather?

Third set of questions: how wealthy is this family that every year they take a month long vacation to a beach house? A week is one thing. But a month? Every single year? I mean, Tucker apparently has angst over whether or not he wants to play water polo and I honestly can't imagine a more boogie sport than that. But in that case, why is their beach house so horrible? You'd think that they could find a better place. Or that they would own one.

Fourth: why does the mom act like this is the last time that they'll be able to have a family vacation? Yes, Charlotte is going to go to college but... college students come home during the summer. It isn't the end of Family Time for the rest of their lives. Maybe my response to this would be different if I was a mother, but I just found it silly.

There's a lot of silly things. It's part of the fun of these kinds of movies. There's silly, stupid things that you can mock and call out as silly and stupid.

Random Thoughts

"I don't know!"; "You don't know that!" Excellent dialogue.

Joey Lawrence is the top billed actor. Don't expect to see him a lot.

What was in the box?

They don't explicitly say what the shark is, but it looks like a bull shark. Not a bad pick, although it was definitely far too small for the amount of damage it inflicted.

Yet another movie where one of the cast is attacked, and instead of anything even remotely resembling an actual shark attack bite, they have a long scratch on their leg.

If you want to watch an actually good movie with a very similar concept, I highly recommend Crawl.Instead of sharks in California, you get alligators in Florida. And alligators are arguably the much scarier animal.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

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