Well, this certainly was not the movie that I expected it to be. Although, I do have to give it credit. It is exactly what its title implies. Both titles.
As one of the titles implies, the movie is set in a trailer park, and its cast is populated with the most stereotypical rednecks that you can imagine. I think that we’re meant to laugh with the characters instead of at them. I think. Honestly, it’s really hard to read the tone and a lot of the humor felt like it was punching down.
There were multiple times where I wasn’t sure if we crossed the line into racist stereotypes, which made it a little uncomfortable to watch. It was also very crude. There was a whole song about “Daisy Skank Pants” (sung to the tune of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” naturally) and a lot of jokes about being in love with a brother and/or cousin.
There’s a cruel edge lurking beneath the surface, and if this wasn’t a Syfy channel movie, then I could see a version where they really indulged in that. It’s actually very tonally similar to Shark Night 3D, down to the one sequence of surprisingly sexualized and sexually threatening violence where a woman is forced into the water.
Rob and Jolene are our characters from Nightmare Shark, and they’re very different here, especially Rob. Instead of a bitter alcoholic, Rob is our determined and heroic protagonist. Jolene doesn’t really have much to do besides stand there and yell that there’s a shark in the water.
The other characters are certainly memorable – how can you forget about a cowboy who water skis under shark power? – but no one that I really cared about. They also did a little bit of a bait and switch. Rob has a whole sequence where he walks through the trailer park (in what is actually a very nicely done oner), but when the levee breaks and floods the park, it is completely unrecognizable and without many of the characters that we meet.
I mean, one of Rob’s establishing actions is to step in and pay off a debt for a mother, and then we just never see her or her young son ever again. Are we to assume that they drowned? That’s pretty sad. There were a bunch of kids running around the park. Are they all dead?
But that’s just one of the possible titles. The second one is Shark Shock. Yeah, they are two very different names. It’s listed under both, although there doesn’t seem to be any real rhyme or reason as to when one is used over the other.
So what does Shark Shock mean? Well, this time around, we have an electric shark. Yeah. You’ve heard of an electric eel? Now we have an electric shark. Apparently biting into power lines doesn’t kill great white sharks like Jaws 2 would have you believe, but instead gives them the ability to emit electric pulses every so often to stun prey. For some reason.
Why? Who knows. The movie really doesn’t care about explaining that.
Why is there a great white shark in the bayou? I have no idea. They really don’t care about that part too much, either. Just that it exists, and that it uses electricity to stun people, set boats on fire, and shut down water skis. And force a woman into convulsively dancing to music because that’s funny? I guess?
Despite this, it actually looks really good. There are multiple times where we see what looks like a physical fin, and while there are some recycled CGI shots, there are also a lot of unique ones. And we do get to see the full shark a lot. They don’t try to hide it. I was pleased with it. Even if I don’t understand why it suddenly gained electricity powers, I was still very pleased.
Of course, being a Syfy movie, there are places where the budget is clearly smaller than their ambition. At one point, the human antagonist mentions that a big storm was going to come through, which would provide cover for the fact that his hired goods purposefully sabotaged the levee so that the trailer park would flood and be uninhabitable.
The positive: they had real water acting as “rain.” The negative: they clearly only had a single hose and you could very clearly see where the “rain” was hitting the river… and where it wasn’t. It was like the characters had their own personal, tiny rain clouds that followed them around. Except, you know, there was no cloud because it was bright, brilliant sunshine instead.
We also didn’t get to see any of the actual flooding. It was just a hard cut to Jolene already being trapped in her fully flooded trailer. I actually thought that I had fallen asleep for a few minutes and had missed a scene, but no. They just had it happen all off screen.
Overall, this was definitely watchable. I would just put it last within this semi-official trilogy.
Random Thoughts
… Was that a real beaver on that guy’s shoulder? It was adorable!
And a gorgeous horse. Duke was beautiful. Up until, you know, she ran head first into a shark. Yeah, major animal death warning here. Duke’s death was arguably way more graphic than any of the humans’. I didn’t need to see the kicking legs afterwards.
Why was the blood bright, neon orange at times? This might be the worst blood effect I’ve seen.
Tara Reid makes a cameo, along with the inevitable reference to Sharknado.
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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally watches far too many shark movies.
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