Customer Reviews

Shark Swarm: Maneater Series

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Greedy land developing schmuck, Armand Assante is buying up the properties of a small coastal fishing town called Full Moon Bay so he can put up a bunch of condos. He's got everyone in his pocket, but fisherman John Schneider just won't sell, and his property is the key to the whole project! Assante decides to play hardball by bullying Schneider with his henchmen. But most importantly, he's dumping toxins in the ocean to kill off all the fish, and in theory, ruin Schneider's business.
Oh, it kills the fish alright, but it messes with the food chain and creates a hungry swarm......A FRIGGIN' SHARK SWARM!!!! Now there's a buttload of sharks chomping down on everything they can get their fins on, including each other. Schneider and his woman, Daryl Hannah have got to turn the tide on this ravenous swarm(Ya like that "turn the tide" ocean-type pun?), and at the same time save their little town from becoming tacky.
This movie is an epic. Sort of. It's awfully damn long, longer than a movie like this should be(damn near 2 hours and 40 minutes!). But from my understanding it was a miniseries so that accounts for the ridiculous length. It's really not all that impressive. It's just interesting enough to keep you watching to the end, but that's about it. There are a bunch of pointless subplots, and good actors are used in very cookie cutter type roles, Assante and F. Murray Abraham especially(Abraham was almost downright pointless!). There are seemingly endless scenes of various people getting attacked by the sharks, at least one scene for every four that go by. This is kinda funny coz nobody seems to notice such a massive amount of people are missing! The sharks are CGI of course, making their scenes look like a shark documentary you'd see on Animal Planet or something, but with a bit more ferocity of course. It looks fake and silly, but I suppose when you're doing a movie about a swarm of hungry and aggressive sharks it's really the only route you can take. I can't imagine sharks can act too well.
But being this is a made for Sc-Fi movie, that alone will make folks determine if they want to see it. And with about eight billion direct-to-video shark films on the shelves, most folks have seen at least one or two of them before and will know what to expect considering this isn't much different. Just much longer.

Obviously, this movie is not Jaws. To hold it to those standards is setting the viewer up for immediate disappointment. But if you take the movie for what it is--a two-hour-and-forty-minute shark drama/epic, then you just might enjoy it as much as I did.

Some of the characters are laughable, and some of them are even kind of likable. Some of the acting is terrible, and some of it is at least okay. And for CG sharks, these aren't the worst out there.

And the lengthiness of it, I for one never found it slow. I never got bored. I don't know; it's definitely not Jaws. Just know that going in and you'll be alright.

Obviously you don't expect much when you pick up a movie like this. This one will live right down to your expectations. This is a really predictable made-for-tv movie. Let me sum up all the kills for you:
1. Footage of cgi sharks swimming ridiculously fast.
2. A shot of someone swimming in the water.
3. A shot of a cgi shark swimming up really close to the camera.
4. A brief shot of some red colored water.
5. Cut away.

That's it. I don't think there's a single shot of a person and a shark together at all in this movie. Just really, really boring. Oh, and Daryl Hannah's gotten pretty nasty.

This movie had an interesting story. I watched it because I had family members that were extras in the movie (parts of the movie were filmed in Mendocino). I thought some parts were a little gross, but the story held our attention. I thought certain things were unbelievable but I thought Daryl Hannah and John Schneider did a good acting job.

I just could'nt resist the opportunity on commenting on this disaster of a movie... actually the worst I have seen in the last say... five years, and on the top five of my life. I am frankly surprised that it got some fair reviews!
I bought it for two reasons: a respectable cast that includes Darryl Hanna, Armand Assante and John Schneider and, being a shark movie fan, I have to admit that the cover was attractive.
I am so disappointed with this cast appearing in a crummy movie like this... Because man... I have seen bad movies... and this one!!
This is about some sharks somewhere that go wild and attack in bunches(swarm) because of some toxic waste thrown in the water and they attack and eat everybody without control. The shark attack scenes are actually just one (or maybe two) same take repeated over and over again. The sharks swim at a ridiculous and impossible speed and the take goes in and out so fast that it is hard to distinguish them at all. What you can notice at first glance is the computerized effect that, as I said, is repeated too many times not to be noticed. The sharks eat half of the town people... and nobody notices anything!!! Hahaha... There is a scene where a lifeguard is playing with a little girl right there in the shallow water waist high at the shore and the shark swarm (yes, the whole swarm) comes in and eat him and none of the lot of people standing right there sees anything or notice the guy is missing at all!! Not then or after! And that happens with one person or a group of people every five minutes... and nobody notices or even suspects anything is wrong!!
At the end, when it comes to the part where you want to see the bad guy
(the worst performance by Armand Assante ever) eaten, the sharks bump ONCE into the posts of a huge pier where he and all of the remaining bad guys are standing... and the pier falls off into the sea!!! Hahahaha... I only laughed harder when I watched the movie than now!! Oh... and then the sharks eat all the bad guys!!
Then, as if this was not enough, on one of the last scenes fins are seen on top of the water again near the beach... rubber fins if you look close!
And there is still something more... it goes on forever!! It lasts 164 eternal minutes during which all that happens is more and more people get eaten with the same impossible to understand fact that it goes unnoticed.
Oh yes, of course there is a plot to it... This bad guy is contaminating the water because he wants to take over the town to get rich building resorts and exploiting the people out of their homes and properties. But that is so lame and hackneyed that it is not even worth to mention.
I am not going to comment on the performances... How could they be any good with this hollow script and direction?
I got bored long before it ended... but, I have to admit, it was one of those terrible movies you watch until the end, and you don't really know why!

Let me start by saying that we cannot expect much from a shark movie. I mean after Jaws.... there's not much to really do with a shark story, except add a biological alteration mixed with lots of sharks. This kind of reminded me of that Spring Break Shark Attack movie, only much better (for one thing, fins weren't overlapping in the water.... the effects were pretty cool in this one). The cast in Shark Swarm was pretty good. Had John Schneider killed a shark with an arrow with dynamite on it, that might have "jumped the shark" for this movie. Overall I was impressed with this movie. It was horror without a lot of gore (believe it or not....). If you like shark attack movies. and don't mind an almost 3 hour flick, check this one out. Another recommendation would be 12 Days of Terror. Not Jaws-quality (since all shark movies will be compared to Jaws, but this one is actually the true-life event that inspired Jaws), but worth watching at least once.

I guess the only step left for shasrk movies at this point would be a land shark, flying shark, talking shark, revised megalodon story or sharks in space. Then again, I wouldn't mind seeing something done on bull sharks, which can survive for long periods of time in fresh waters. One was caught in Missouri several years ago in the Mississippi River. I think there was a movie done about sharks in a river a few years ago.... but it sucked. There is also the USS Indianapolis movie due out next year, I think.

I think this movie has what many other movies of this type lack: good CGI for its budget, acceptable acting, and OK plot. It is also unusually long for this kind of films. Unlike most movies of this type, this one does not last 90 or 80 but 164 minutes. Thats as long as the second Harry Potter film and the last Pirates of the Caribbean film! But its better than most films of this genre.

As a lot of other reviewers have stated, you aren't expecting much when you decide to watch a movie like this...it's definitely no "Jaws".

***POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILERS***

The basic premise of "Shark Swarm" is yet another Hollywood warning about the dangers of trashing Mother Nature. Hamilton Lux (Assante) has been authorizing the dumping of toxic waste into the waters of Full Moon Bay for a long enough time to kill off the fishing industry and turn every shark in the area into an ultra-violent maneater. Daniel Wilder (Schneider), his wife (Hannah), and his brother set out to stop Lux from taking over their town in order to build his development of luxury condos. F. Murray Abraham plays Dr. Bill Girdler--the university professor who seems to spend a large chunk of the movie sitting at computers, tracking the shark swarms by satellite, and relaying their position to the movie's heroes.

O.K., the story is lame but it isn't any lamer than "Hammerhead Shark Attack", "It Lives", and similar fare. The acting is so-so. I have to admit I was rather surprised and saddened to see four actors--Hannah, Assante, Schneider, and Abraham--who used to be respectable actors choosing to be in this turkey. I guess money is money. The other actors are noticeably bad. The guy who plays Schneider's brother and his EPA girlfriend are terrible, as is the girl playing Schneider and Hannah's daughter. My husband and I both found the daughter particularly irritating, as her idea of acting was apparently to simper like an idiot in practically every scene.

Schneider's character was also hard to cheer on, as he came across as a hot-headed, arrogant jerk. I've always liked Armand Assante, but was saddened to see how much hair he has lost. This also wasn't his best acting effort, as he mumbled almost all of his lines and was impossible to understand. F. Murray Abraham did O.K., given the quality of the material, as did Darryl Hannah. Hannah's appearance, however, was quite shocking. Even though I knew she was in this movie before I started watching it, it took me a few minutes and a double-take to recognize her. Frankly, it almost looked like she was on Prednisone, as she had a moon-faced appearance that is a typical side effect of that medication.

Overall, this movie is about what you would expect. The dialogue--with the exception of a rather funny Sea World retort--is poor. The filmmakers seemed to spend little time on the script and put most of their efforts into making lots of CGI sharks. Personally, I find the CGI annoying. Call me old fashioned, but I much prefer the mechanical shark look--when it's done well, of course. The CGI sharks zoomed around ridiculously fast, roared frequently, and made a sound like a jet rocket every time they swam. It was good for a laugh, anyway.

Also rather annoying was the way the scenes were strung together. It was very choppy. They'd just start getting into a scene when they would suddenly cut to something completely different. This was especially noticeable in the overabundance of scuba diver attacks. The main characters would talk briefly and then the scene would suddenly cut to some unknown person/persons scuba diving in the middle of the night, no less. They would be immediately attacked and then the scene would suddenly cut to something else. It was never explained who these people were, why on earth they were diving in the middle of the night, or why no one in the small town of Full Moon Bay ever seemed to notice or report their disappearance. I believe there were around 4-5 short scenes showing the demise of anonymous scuba divers and they all played out in almost exactly the same way. After a couple of these scenes, the attacks became very predictable and boring.

Ultimately, this movie isn't great and I would never buy it (I checked it out of the library), but it's O.K. if you're looking for something low-quality, cheesy, mindless, and semi-entertaining. For those who are seeking a shark attack movie of a much higher caliber, I would recommend "Twelve Days of Terror" with John Rhys-Davies--a much better flick that is based on actual events.

It was very exciting movie. It brought the feelings from Jaws but with new twist.

This is a good movie and I love John Schiender in this movie, and his co actors. I like shark movies I have always wanted to be a marine bilogist sence the first Jaws came out.