Yet another in the long line of Creature Feature TV movies that seem to be the bane of modern cinema in the 2000s. SHARK SWARM has everything I dislike about such productions: a low budget (in a bad way), poor cast, rubbish script, and, worst of all, rubbishy CGI effects. The effects in this one are among the worst I've seen: the sharks are relegated to murky, underwater CGI images throughout the film, with nary a mechanical beastie in sight. The budget is low too, of course, and the script takes the scraps left over by JAWS and turns them into a lacklustre thriller with obvious nods to the likes of PIRANHA and others, all of them better films than this. So once again we have a greedy corporate type busy building a business and ignoring the warning signs; a courageous, humble fisherman who first spots the menace; bodies washed up on the beach; fishermen catching something more than they bargained for; marine biologists and women in rubber suits, and lots of other B-movie elements. Even one of the characters is called Bill Girdler, in reference to a director of popular 'animal attack' movies back in the '70s.
The one thing this film does have going for it is the cast: although the performances are bad, more of the faces are familiar than you might expect. I'm not talking about the B-movie regulars who pop up in this, although there are a lot of them (John Enos III, John Schneider, Heather McComb, Willie C. Carpenter). I'm talking about the 'once weres', former greats at the box office now relegated to making this trash and picking up a pay cheque afterwards. Daryl Hannah, old collagen lips, whose career seems to be in free fall with this and KUNG FU KILLER; and F. Murray Abraham, who knows no shame with this and BLOOD MONKEY (although his appearance here is little more than a cameo), and worst of all, the leathery, bewigged Armand Assante, who once played to audiences in JUDGE DREDD and 1492. Meanwhile, director James A. Contner once worked as a cinematographer on JAWS 3D, so I guess he knew what he was doing when he set out to shoot this. A worthless movie indeed.
The one thing this film does have going for it is the cast: although the performances are bad, more of the faces are familiar than you might expect. I'm not talking about the B-movie regulars who pop up in this, although there are a lot of them (John Enos III, John Schneider, Heather McComb, Willie C. Carpenter). I'm talking about the 'once weres', former greats at the box office now relegated to making this trash and picking up a pay cheque afterwards. Daryl Hannah, old collagen lips, whose career seems to be in free fall with this and KUNG FU KILLER; and F. Murray Abraham, who knows no shame with this and BLOOD MONKEY (although his appearance here is little more than a cameo), and worst of all, the leathery, bewigged Armand Assante, who once played to audiences in JUDGE DREDD and 1492. Meanwhile, director James A. Contner once worked as a cinematographer on JAWS 3D, so I guess he knew what he was doing when he set out to shoot this. A worthless movie indeed.