by ·Comments Off on Dangerous Animals (2025, Sean Byrne)

After Alone, why not watch another girl get kidnapped by a serial killer and try to escape her fate. This time things are more complicated – we see other victims, there’s an attempted rescue, and the maniac is a boater who feeds captured surfers to sharks while filming them on VHS.

Surfer Zephyr (of Southbound) has a lovely time with new friend Moses, then she drives to the beach, gets kidnapped by a maniac and locked on his boat with fellow victim Heather. Really Good Guy Moses keeps searching for her, connects the clues, and arrives only to be kidnapped himself, then Z chews off her own thumb to escape from the cuffs Saw-style. Byrne is two for two, now I’ve gotta catch The Loved Ones. Everyone else who watches this already knows who villain Jai Courtney is – I’ve only seen him in Edward Furlong cosplay as a lead-in to Yoga Hosers.

by ·Comments Off on The Shallows (2016, Jaume Collet-Serra)

Happy SHOCKtober 2019!

From the first five minutes, this movie is too energetic and stylized to be a standard-ass survival/horror. Even the character setup scenes, video phone calls with her family, are visualized in a way I’ve never quite seen before. After that you’ve got your surfer, stranded on a tiny island trapped by an angry killer shark, and we remember Open Water but we’ve established that she’s organized and resourceful so this could go either way. Some dodgy CG when she escapes to a buoy and the enraged shark chomps the metal railings, otherwise a colorful, terrific-looking movie. The winning move, crowning this the queen of all shark-attack films, is introducing an injured seagull as Blake Lively’s only companion, naming it Steven Seagull, then feeding it crabs and letting it live to the end. Guess I’ll have to watch the rest of Collet-Serra’s movies now, to thank him for this seagull generosity (not including any superhero spinoffs and/or theme-park-ride adaptations he may have in the works).

I only know Lively from Age of Adaline. The writer followed up with a Coachella satanism flick and a couple TV movies, and is headed back out to sea this year with Gary Oldman. DP Flavio Labiano has also worked with Alex de la Iglesia and Snoop Dogg, and shot Timecrimes.