Chum (2026) Review – Watch Literally Anything Else

Welcome to Knockout Horror and to our review of shark themed thriller Chum (2026). This is (somehow) currently in a cinema run but it will probably be on VOD any day now.

Why Do I Always Put Myself Through This?

I’m not going to lie, I am a sucker for shark movies. A decent shark movie can be among the best viewing options when it comes to just switching your brain off and having a good time. Just look at something like Dangerous Animals or Open Water as an example.

“My fiancee chose to do some cleaning last night rather than sit and watch this movie. I wish I would have picked up the hoover and joined her.”

The problem is, a decent shark movie is a rare aquatic beast indeed. I have reviewed quite a few on this site and, just being perfectly honest, most of them are absolute dogfish shit. They all follow a similar formula, they all seem to feature the same awful special effects team, and they all scrape the bottom of the barrel to find their stars, script writers, and directors.

Chum is no different. In fact, I think it is safe to assume that the barrel that Chum was scraping from was completely void of any content at all, extremely rusty, and potentially spent the last few years living at the bottom of the ocean. This is among the worst shark movies I have ever endured and it begs the question – why do I keep putting myself through this?

My fiancee chose to do some cleaning last night rather than sit and watch this movie. She already sensed the blood in the water and knew how awful it would be. Something about the cover completely gave it away. When you are picking toiling with a dish cloth over sitting through a film, it says a lot. I wish I would have picked up the hoover and joined her.

Simply awful!

Things don’t exactly start in a positive way, here. Chum opens with a narrator reciting a script the likes of which could put The Room to shame. Some pointless dialogue about love and revenge that essentially acts as a blind spot to the old tale of Moby Dick. I suppose it sets up the story, though, so we’ll allow it.

Said story doesn’t actually pivot back to this narration topic until much later in the film. For the first half, we are actually following a recently married couple. A couple that, despite said marriage, are obviously going through some relationship issues.

They join a few friends on a yacht trip to celebrate their recent nuptials but an accident results in their vessel becoming stranded in shark infested waters. Luckily, help isn’t far from hand. Help that comes in the form of a man who may, or may not, have a hidden dark side.

This is a really common formula for shark movies, as of late. Directors seem to enjoy blending an animalistic threat with a very human one. Honestly, it’s purely so they can give you the old “the real monster is man” spiel at the end, despite them spending the past hour and a half depicting sharks chewing off people’s legs.

Some, like the aforementioned Dangerous Animals, work really well. The majority, however, deserve to be thrown back into the waves. Great White Waters is a perfect example of this, as is Chum itself. Nothing here works, at all.

It’s generic, absurd, and ultra boring

The plot is dishwater dull and frequently nonsensical. The struggling couple trope is done to death, for one. They have drifted apart over time and the marriage was a band-aid, we get it! It’s so painfully derivative.

“Every now and then, director Jonathan Zuck throws in a gratuitous cleavage or ass shot to try and spice things up but it’s more laughable than titillating.”

The fact that, early on, it dominates over the somewhat more interesting, but still woefully awful, revenge based narrative thread is rather baffling. It also leads to a level of predictability that’s quite laughable. You’ll see the end coming from a mile off.

Once that clumsiness gets out of the way, Chum turns into an hour long kidnapping drama with sub-standard acting and a script that was almost certainly padded by AI. After all, why focus on sharks when you can focus on a group of bikini-clad ladies trying to figure out how to get out of their restraints while uttering some of the most inane dialogue ever put to film?

There’s absolutely nothing to latch onto and the excitement is non-existent. Action focused scenes that may offer a little promise quickly fizzle out into the brine. There’s a lethargy to them that almost makes you grateful when the movie resorts back to its formulaic pattern of tied up people trying to figure out how to escape their restraints.

Every now and then, director Jonathan Zuck throws in a gratuitous cleavage or ass shot to try and spice things up but it’s more laughable than titillating. It all feels a bit desperate, too. The last ten minutes basically consist of Zuck trying to find as many ways as possible to film Alice Eve’s chest.

Speaking of Eve, she’s the only really noteworthy cast member and she’s… okay, I suppose. Eve shares production credits on this film but I imagine the bulk of the work came from either ChatGPT or Gemini. Everyone else is pretty awful and that terrible script doesn’t offer them any help.

The shark effects aren’t actually that bad

It shocks me to type this but the shark effects are actually okay. In fact, they look pretty good; significantly better than what you would see in an equivalent Asylum shark movie, for example.

“Chum is pretty much the worst of the worst when it comes to shark movies. It’s impossible to recommend to anyone other than the most committed genre enthusiast.”

Don’t get me wrong, there is a weird uncanny vibe to most of the underwater stuff and the occasional bit of texture-less rubberiness but it’s not bad. Again, it’s a big step above the usual PlayStation 1 era CGI you see in most budget shark flicks.

It kinda makes you dislike the movie even more for not putting more emphasis on the sharks themselves. I do have a sneaking suspicion that the effects are generated by AI, though. This, naturally, creates a bit of an ethical conundrum.

There’s going to be a lot of people who simply won’t want to support this type of thing and that’s completely fair. When it comes to these made-for-VOD movies, though, the almighty dollar is king. Anything that speeds up production and cuts down costs is going to dominate.

These movies are made purely to turn a profit on streaming sites. I think we will be seeing much more of this in the future. Chum actually made me realise that the days of terrible shark effects in low budget horror movies might almost be behind us. I wonder if people will miss the low quality charm?

With all of that being said, Chum is pretty much the worst of the worst when it comes to shark movies. It’s impossible to recommend to anyone other than the most committed genre enthusiast. Hell, it’s not even worth it from a so-bad-it’s-good point of view. Just avoid!

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.