Shark Night [2011]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

From the director who brought you the second and fourth "Final Destination" movies and "Snakes On A Plane" comes one of the most startlingly uncreative films ever made: "Shark Night." The plot was ripped right out of the dead college student horror movie guidebook. Instead of watching this, you should probably just watch "Cabin In The Woods" and not destroy your evening. 

Seven Tulane University students and their dog set out to one of their summer houses for a few nights of fun. As we have come to understand it they are The Scholar (who is an explicitly stated virgin), The Athlete, The Fool, The Other Fool (we named him Buttflex after his nude intro), The Slut, The Virgin, and The Girl Who Dies Too Soon To Get A Personality But Is Dating The Athlete. First the Athlete gets his arm bitten off off-screen shortly followed by his girlfriend getting devoured by a shark off-screen. It should be noted that the Athlete is black and his girlfriend is Latina. Yes. They went there. The Scholar tries his best to help his unarmed friend to little avail but all seems to be saved when those two rednecks they met at the rest stop show up and offer to help. Instead of calling for help they take the Fool and the Slut out into the water and feed them to the sharks who they apparently control and have rigged up with cameras. Buttflex tries to take the Athlete to help on his own but Athlete commits suicide on the way and Buttflex is eaten by a giant shark head on. This leaves just the Scholar and the Virgin who are separately kidnapped by the rednecks and told of their evil plan: to make shark snuff films for consumers for whom "Shark Week" is too tame. Sharks After Dark, if you will. They are saved by their virgin powers. The dog is also fine.

This movie is so lazy that within just a few minutes we were predicting accurately who would die when and what would happen.The phrase "I hate this" was muttered by everyone in attendance at different points in time. But to say something nice about the movie: it is hilariously meta. The whole scheme of the bad guys is to profit off people's voyeuristic enjoyment of watching people get attacked by sharks . . . which is the exact reason anyone would watch a shark attack movie like this one in the first place. It's like the creators are saying, "We see you, audience, and we're judging you." Well, I'm judging you right back. No amount of meta commentary on human nature could make this movie not the embodiment of boring and conventional mediocrity.