#MANEATER REVIEW MOVIE#

Her friends have 'dragged her' along for a beautiful tropical getaway, steered through crystalline waters toward what passes for a deserted island in the 21st century. Jessie (Nicky Whelan), however, gets an added piece of character development, as she's recently lost a long-term relationship, and so her bikini is black, and she smiles a little less. The film's characters are most distinguishable by the fact that they have different names two of them even have more than one syllable.

Suffice it to say, Maneater is tonally weird and inconsistent, but again, almost funny as a result.

#MANEATER REVIEW MOVIE#

The omnipresent music in the movie abruptly shifts to something playful and jaunty to accompany half-naked bodies, as if the soundtrack is experiencing bursts of heavy-duty serotonin at regular intervals. There are numerous other shark attacks throughout the movie to varying degrees of effectiveness, and they always seem to smash cut into some bright, happy atmosphere (as evidenced by song titles like Chill, Island Breeze, and Shza Woo). Maneater has a tendency to do this a lot. Related: Why Are Shark Movies Having Such a Big Moment? It all suddenly feels like a commercial for a cruise line, more Sex on the Beach than blood in the water. Then, just like that, a jarring edit takes viewers on a sunny, island-hopping montage set to summery pop music. The film begins with a scuba diver submerged in some cavernous depths before the screen turns red and CGI teeth chomp about the title somberly appears in the dark waters as muffled screams are heard. The opening of Maneater is indicative of just how ridiculous this film is.

Maneater is not a great movie it may be a great drinking game, though. It is, however, almost 'so bad it's good,' from the utter silliness of some scenes and the cheapness of the CGI shark, to some comically questionable cinematic choices. Maneater forgets this entirely, producing a fairly hollow film as a result. No, it was suspenseful direction, minimalist music, and great characters grounded within a tight script that made Jaws great, not the shark. It could be argued that Jaws wasn't even a 'shark movie' at all the shark in Steven Spielberg's film was only on-screen for four minutes, and when it was, it was usually a pretty obvious animatronic machine. Unfortunately, this film falls into the same trap as many others, misunderstanding what made Jaws so great. There have been several this year alone, including the pretty good The Reef: Stalked, and now there's Maneater, from writer/director Justin Lee. There had been so-called 'shark movies' before it (from The White Death in 1936 to Shark! in 1969), and even one masterpiece ( Blue Water, White Death from 1971), but it was Jaws that seemed to popularize the concept. Jaws is a great movie (maybe the greatest movie ever made, if you're Quentin Tarantino).

Maneater review