Maneater

Image credit: themoviedb.org

Continuing on in our pursuit of delightfully dumb eco horror movies to watch on a Friday night, the film of choice last Friday was a perfectly predictable and boring large shark movie called Maneater. No relation to the videogame of the same name, which honestly might have made the film better. B-grade horror films are fun, but I’m starting to see that there is a fine line between the overly enjoyable dumb ones and the ones that are just boring and bland. These ones are probably the worst because you can’t even enjoy making fun of them. I think this boils down to a lack of sincerity; you can’t feel the fun or love or want that made this movie come into existence and thus, can only talk about it coldly.

Recently broken up with, Jess (Nicky Whelan) spends her would-be honeymoon with a bunch of friends at a beachside resort. Eager to get her mind off her melancholy, her friends organise an ocean tour that takes them to a beautiful little island where they plan to camp. But the idyllic getaway turns nightmarish with the arrival of a great white shark that starts to pick off the campers one by one.

Narratively, it’s clear that the waters for good shark movie plots are shallow indeed. Jaws worked because it didn’t necessarily villainise the shark, but the greed of people and our own sense of status within the pecking order. Deep Blue Sea added a science fiction element into the story that at least made the sharks’ behaviour interesting. Even The Shallows made a point of using believable shark behaviour to heighten the terror of being caught between teeth and a wet place. But Maneater is a movie that just says, ‘by the way, shark’.

A bland and boring film that narratively treads the path of Jaws with a revenge story mixed in, this film could have been fun but suffered from burnout very quickly. It felt as though everyone in it stopped caring even before shooting began. The story is predictable, basic, and (most annoyingly) unfulfilling, as characters establish that there’s something odd about this shark’s behaviour but they don’t bother exploring it beyond, ‘this shark isn’t killing for food, it’s killing for fun’.

Image credit: Rakuten.tv

There is zero character development, thus absolutely zero emotional reaction when they get chomped. Even the vengeful hunter character is boring A F so the only thing there is to enjoy about this film is wondering why the shark looks like it’s been through a shredder.

Despite its name, which instantly gets the Hall and Oates song stuck in one’s head, Maneater is a boring and mediocre shark movie that’s fine for a mindless night it but don’t expect any real enjoyment to come from it.

Director: Justin Lee, 2022

Cast: Trace Adkins, Nicky Whelan, Shane West, Porscha Coleman, Ed Morrone, Kelly Lynn Reiter, Alex Farnham, Zoe Cipres, Branscombe Richmond, Jeff Fahey, & Kim DeLonghi