Hot Spring Shark Attack review
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the…hot tub.
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Coming to select theaters and VOD July 11th.
Hot Spring Shark Attack
Directed by Morihito Inoue
Written by Morihito Inoue
Starring Daniel Aguilar, Shoichiro Akaboshi, Takuya Fujimura, Kiyobumi Kaneko, Koichi Makigami, Masaki Naito and Mio Takaki
Hot Spring Shark Attack Review
A young girl’s body washes up on the beach. She’s the victim of a shark attack. The chief of police has to contend with a meddlesome mayor while getting advice from an out of town shark expert. This is, of course, the plot of Steven Spielberg’s 50-year-old masterpiece Jaws. It’s also the plot of Japanese Sharksploitation movie Hot Spring Shark Attack. Or Hotspring Sharkattack in the credits. Or Onsen Shâku in Japanese. To say that Hot Spring Shark Attack blazes its own trail after a familiar setup would be a profound understatement. Strap yourself in for a weird one.
Japanese Sharksploitation isn’t a subgenre of film that I was aware existed. The influence of Spielberg’s Jaws, however, has been evident as recently as our 2023 Scare Value Award Winning Best Picture Godzilla Minus One. That film takes its homage a bit more seriously than Hot Spring Shark Attack. The best way I can describe this movie’s take on Jaws is “insane”. Crazier, in fact, than a podcast attempting to do a table read of a Jaws screenplay written from memory the night before. Hey, we all honor Jaws in our own ways.
Hot Spring Shark Attack chooses to honor it by running towards every weird impulse it can find in the moment. A supposedly extinct breed of shark is terrorizing the waters of Atsumi City. When I say waters…I mean all the waters. This type of shark can contort itself to fit through pipes and likes to feed on the people relaxing in local spas…or Hot Spring as the English translation of Onsen will have us know. Yes, it’s a movie about sharks that can get to you near practically any source of water. The story begins by presenting this as a mystery for our main characters to solve. They figure out quickly that the naked bodies on the beaches are washing up from the hot springs. The movie has too many ideas to spend long on just one of them.
Those ideas include, in no particular order, a 3D printer than can make skyscrapers and flying submarines at the drop of a hat, an infection that gives the infected a glowing purple hue, sharks that can laugh and say “shark”, a methane gas emitted by the sharks that cause anyone trying to shoot them down to explode in a ball of flames, EMP attacks…from the sharks to counter advanced weaponry, the ability for sharks to pop out of puddles they create at a moments notice and, in a prominent role in the film, a strong man who is able to fight sharks even while he’s underwater.
That unnecessarily long sentence is just some of the crazy stuff that Hot Spring Shark Attack gets up to. The tone of the movie matches these wacky concepts perfectly. The story is taken seriously by all those caught within it…even as the goofiest things are happening around them. It’s easily the best way for this material to be handled…adding another layer of comedic effect to the lunacy playing out before us.
But Hot Spring Shark Attack isn’t solely about throwing wild ideas at you like jokes in a Zucker Brothers movie. At its heart…it fully understands Jaws. Behind all the crazy scenes…there is a deep respect for what it is building from. We get a full Mrs. Kintner slap scene in this movie…directed at the more deserving target…the mayor. Like Brody in Jaws, the slap spurs the mayor on to do the right thing. It’s a small moment that may go unnoticed due to it occurring while a man we watched get half eaten by a shark that popped out of a puddle glows a deep purple color while characters discuss getting a vaccine from the extinct shark’s fin…but it’s there.
We’ve gone too far into a Sharksploitation movie review without addressing the first question on everyone’s mind whenever a new shark attack movie hits. How do the sharks look? Nothing undoes the noble intentions of a killer shark movie faster than bad CGI. Hot Spring Shark Attack knows that…and they’ve come up with an interesting solution. Yes…it has some subpar CGI but it wisely distracts you with choppy clip art shark attacks and a scene where a man fights with a rubber monster like Martin Landau in Ed Wood. Sometimes, the sharks appear to be made out of clay. One time it appears to be a child’s toy eating a barbie doll. Hot Spring Shark Attack defeats budgetary issues with unbridled comedic creativity. It throws everything it can against the wall. So much so that it almost doesn’t matter what sticks…because your eyes are already onto the next thing.
The plot can be broken down to a simple attempt to save Atsumi City from sharks. The more that Hot Spring Shark Attack layers onto this premise…the more difficult it becomes to describe…and the more it needs to be experienced. From a literal influencer blood bath to a giant king shark complete with a crown…Hot Spring Shark Attack will leave anyone who gives it a try with a smile and an earned, you son of a bitch”.
Scare Value
Jaws on acid. Should have just started the body of the review with those words as they are the best way to describe what you’re in store for with Hot Spring Shark Attack. It wastes no time and moves towards the most absurd choice it can think of at every turn. Plenty of laughs come from plenty of angles…including the way that Hot Spring Shark Attack turns into the slide with its rough looking shark animations. When in doubt…Hot Spring Shark Attack looks for a way to make you laugh with it. When it can’t…it embraces letting you laugh at it. As long as you’re having a good time…it’s happy.
3.5/5
Hot Spring Shark Attack Link
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