Shark Night 3D- Movie Review

Directed by David R. Ellis
Written by Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg
Running Time: 91 minutes (1h, 31 mins.)
Rated PG-13 (for violence and terror, disturbing images, sexual references, partial nudity, language and thematic material).
Distributor: Relativity Media

Now, if you didn't read the credits at the top or maybe you did, I'll make it clear once again. Shark Night 3D is a PG-13 rated film. That means no extreme gore, no sex or nudity (except for the exposed butt of a guy modeling for an art class and I guess I can count the sexual remarks), no extreme language and to repeat myself, NO GORE! Just a little, but still none that you see in the Saw movies or a movie that's pretty much a huge inspiration to Shark Night 3D, Piranha 3D.

The story is very simple: a bunch of hot, young students at Tulane University spend the weekend at a lake house, only to be attacked by sharks shortly after they arrived. But what they don't know is that someone's watching and this is their form of entertainment. Each of these people have a type, because in films like this, there's always gotta be a type (sarcasm). You got the nerdy dude, the tough black athlete, the free spirits, the girl next door, etc, etc and the audience is gonna have one they want eaten.

This review will have plenty of comparisons to last year's Piranha 3D, because as I mentioned before, that's pretty much the big inspiration. Piranha 3D was one of the best films of the year in my opinion. It was the most shameless, goriest (even gorier than Saw 3D), funniest thing I saw all year with creative kills, over-the-top performances and nudity galore. Basically it wasn't afraid to be what it was and what it was was ridiculous, but in a good way. This is also ridiculous, but in the opposite way. Instead of being fun and exciting like Piranha was, it's kinda serious. I know Jaws was a serious film, but that was fun too and it had characters that we actually cared about. This doesn't. It tries, but later, it fails.

At many times, this film gets stupid, again not in a good way. What even raises its stupidity is some guy who chuckles as if he wants to be the next Larry The Cable Guy. He's played by Joshua Leonard, who you might remember from The Blair Witch Project. At least he made his performance somewhat believable. With the exception of Joel Moore (who I remember well from Avatar), the rest of the performances aren't believable. Then again, I don't think they should be. They're not trying to make a Oscar contender anyway. The 3D is effective in a couple of parts, but otherwise it's pretty gimmicky. I know it was filmed with a 3D camera, but at times it doesn't feel like it, which kinda sucks.

The film's director is David R. Ellis, who brought us two Final Destination films (2 & 4), Cellular, with Kim Basinger and a pre-Captain America Chris Evans, and the movie that had Samuel L. Jackson give one of the best lines of all-time, Snakes on a Plane. I really don't know what to say about his direction, not that it's a bad thing. I never really said anything about his direction on his past films.

Look, as much as this is a film to see in 3D, it's not really one that you have to rush to the theatre to see. It's more of a DVD/Blu-Ray rental if you think about it. Yes, as I mentioned before, it's ridiculous (not in a good way) and at times, it felt like a TV movie (then again, TV movies like this are worse, an example is Sharktopus), but at least I wasn't bored and some of the performances were somewhat entertaining. At best, this gets ** (2 stars).