Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today we are going to be taking a look at the incredibly awful Shark Huntress. I found this one on Tubi, obviously, so we will throw this in our Low Budget Horror on Tubi category.
You are going to probably think I am joking when I break down the plot of Shark Huntress, it is beyond silly. A woman, Sheila, loses touch with her mother for a couple of days. Determined to find her, she heads to the island where she was working. A devoted environmentalist, Sheila’s mother had been working on alternatives to one time use plastics. Something which, apparently, angered big plastic making her disappearance a little suspicious.
Upon arriving on the island, Sheila finds out that her mother has been killed by a rogue shark. Determined to get revenge on the shark and to bring down the plastics industry. Sheila heads out with her environmentalist pals, a spear gun, and a scuba kit. Holy shit, what a terrible idea for a movie. Let me summarise that, once again, for you just for the records. An environmentalist wants to kill a shark that was acting on instinct all while bringing down the plastic industry. Does this movie seem a little confused to anyone else?
Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?
The plot of Shark Huntress has me asking a few questions. One being how the hell did this thing get commissioned? And another being why did nobody love the writers enough to tell them that they are shit at their jobs and need to quit? Somebody actually spent time writing this trash out on the back of a napkin and another person actually added their ideas and opinions to it. Not once did someone come along and say “What the hell is this shit?”.
If a person told you they had an idea for a shark movie where an environmentalist seeks revenge on a shark that killed her mother. You would probably feel that, as a friend, you were obligated to tell them how dumb of an idea it was and that they should burn it immediately. Never breathing a word of it to another human ear for the rest of time. You might even be well within your rights to disown them as a friend. Nobody did that to writers Dante Delmare and Dustin Alexander III. Nobody cared about them enough to stop them embarrassing themselves. Not a single person thought for one second to tell John Riggins that he shouldn’t direct this movie. There wasn’t anybody in his life to tell him he was committing career suicide and the result of this negligence is Shark Huntress.
Undermines Its Own Message
If you told me this was a movie made by actual anti-plastic industry activists, I would believe you. It plays out, very much, like the corny type of hypocritical crap made by narcissistic students that believe they are the only ones that can save the planet. All while engaging in the very actions that they are campaigning against. You know the types, complaining on Reddit about corporate greed and capitalism while posting on their iPhones and wearing Nike trainers. I get it, we are all hypocrites in one way or another. These guys just don’t seem to realise it.
Shark Huntress goes out of its way to preach about the dangers of one time plastics, as well as the damage being done to the environment. All while Sheila grabs the biggest spear gun that she can find so that she can give a shark a brand new breathing hole. It just feels so utterly ridiculous. What is the message here? It’s okay to take revenge on an animal if it killed someone who was a one drop relative? Plastics are bad but so are sharks? Let’s make one time plastics big enough so they only effect sharks? I don’t know. It’s a dumb plot written by dummies. That’s not the worst of this movie’s issues, though.
Just Completely Terrible
Every single thing that could possibly go wrong with movie making has gone wrong here. Terrible acting, awful dialogue, technical issues, everything. Shark Huntress is the definition of an awful film. It starts poor and just keeps on getting worse. Katrina Grey’s quickly abandoned, terrible American accent offers a quick hint of things to come. The camera operator’s reflection appearing in a character’s sunglasses also suggests we may be dealing with a careless production crew. But as time goes on, the issues just continue to mount.
Horrible audio hissing and low quality, overly compressed, dialogue plague every scene. A script that reads like the writer only just learned that one time plastics are a bad thing adds a touch of the remedial to genuinely serious issues. Terrible death scenes that play out as someone with a shark fin attached to their back squirting red dye into the water while they pull the unfortunate character around a bit provoke genuine groans. It’s all so awful, there isn’t a single thing to praise here.
This is a shark movie so we must, at the very least, have some action, right? Well that’s what you may think but the answer would be a resounding no. Nothing happens for the entire film. The cover hints at some epic battle between a woman and a shark. The closest we get to that is Sheila standing ankle deep in the swell pointing her speargun into the open sea. It is terrible.
To emphasise this point. We actually get an extended part of the movie where Sheila gets her diving certification. I shit you not! We actually see her taking diving lessons. She sits in a waist deep pool wearing scuba gear and learning to breath using the apparatus. We even see her taking her final exam. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Have you ever watched a movie where someone seeking revenge has to get a certification for something? Imagine watching John Wick taking his black belt in Karate or Han Solo receiving his pilot’s license. It is so silly.
Horrific Acting
Right, let me get this out of the way first so I can pull out the flamethrower. Some people may not agree but I thought Eve Cerda was, actually, okay. Sure, her character is terribly written and they have her saying dumb things like “Thumbs down emoji” but she is okay. She feels fairly natural and does a good job making her lines feel, at least somewhat, organic..
Everyone else sucks a fat one. This is some of the worst acting I have ever actually seen. Katrina Grey is completely and utterly horrific. She has a thick accent that lends her a sort of Tommy Wiseau quality. Her line delivery is completely flat, she never emotes and seems completely bored. She can cry on cue pretty well, though.Â
John Flano, as Guru, is even worse. I have no clue what was going on with this guy, his delivery is so bizarre. He says every line in the same exact way and doesn’t seem to understand the script. I am fairly sure he must have very limited acting experience. A scene later in the movie where he is drunk is absolutely hilarious for how bad his acting is.
Dean Alexandrou, as err Dean, and Russell Geoffrey Banks, as Luca are pretty bad, as well. I kind of got the feeling both were very bored, Banks in particular. I get the feeling he can probably act, he just didn’t want to. Maybe he realised how bad this movie was and decided to phone it in. Who can blame him?
Should You Watch Shark Huntress?
No, just skip Shark Huntress. A farcical story, poor direction, terrible pacing, no action, awful acting and a horrendous script add up to something that is little more than an exercise in visual torture.