Shark Girl review
Shark Girl is a B-movie that understands its best weapon is to stay firmly in its lane. More low budget horror should follow its lead.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Shark Girl
Directed by Justin Shilton and Rob Zazzali
Written by Justin Shilton and Rob Zazzali
Starring Alexandra Corin Johnston, Sumayyah Ameerah, Nick Tag, Ryan Bertroche, Devon Odessa and Randolph Summiel
Shark Girl Review
A lot of low budget movies can learn a lesson from Shark Girl. The unapologetically B-movie adheres to the first rule of independent filmmaking. Don’t write something you can’t shoot. Too many small movies are undone by brutal effects or sequences that the production level never should have attempted. A fundamentally solid script is your best friend. Sure, everyone who makes a creature feature would love to fill the screen with impressive make-up and gore effects. The truth is…subpar effects do more damage than having no effects at all.
Shark Girl keeps it simple. Heidi (Alexandra Corin Johnston) is bitten by a shark in the film’s opening scene. With no way to effectively pull off a convincing looking shark attack…Shark Girl wisely chooses to avoid showing it altogether. Hey…it worked for Spielberg. Due to a toxic chemical spill…this was no ordinary shark bite. Heidi turns into a predator…a…shark girl. It’s a solid B-movie plot that could have rested on those laurels and appealed to the Asylum/SyFy original sect. The script goes above and beyond the usual fodder, however. It does so by simply containing a basic story structure and arc for its main character.
Before Heidi runs afoul of the toxic shark…Shark Girl gives her an almost literal “save the cat” moment. Noticing a missing dog flyer, Heidi takes a picture and sends it to her throngs of followers in hopes that the owner will be reunited with their beloved pooch. It’s a device as old as storytelling…but it’s an effective one. We get precious little time with Heidi before she becomes a monster. This one simple act allows us to see that she was a caring person before the event…and gives her character a starting point on her journey.
Now…if you’ve read any of our reviews about the seemingly never-ending string of influencer-based horror films…you may have noticed I used the word “followers”. Yes…Shark Girl is about an influencer. Without relitigating the tropes of this new subgenre of film…Shark Girl bucks many of the trends. Instead of presenting a vapid, phony persona…Heidi is the genuine article. In fact, the movie posits a completely different angle on the whole thing. Instead of being hunted or punished for her chosen career…Shark Girl shows us a young woman surrounded by users and monsters. The kinds of people that a newfound set of shark teeth would love to sink their teeth into.
Since the movie isn’t wasting (almost) any time…these antagonists are painted in plain black and white. You can spot a bad person within the first few words out of their mouth. Heidi’s vengeful takedowns are borderline acceptable. For a time. The script does more with her killing spree than you expect from a movie of this ilk. Heidi instinctually chows down on the neck of a man who tries to help her when she washes up on the beach…but she’s clearly not in control at that moment. The next series of deaths would fit in a revenge story. Murder isn’t right…but she’s only eating awful people. It could be worse.
On the other side of the ledger…Shark Girl presents some classic B-movie character types. It isn’t enough for Heidi to have friends who bear witness to (and the brunt of) her change…they also fill necessary roles. Best friend Sienna (Sumayyah Ameerah) is in school for marine biology. Christopher (Nick Tag) joins the crew with the convenient job of local reporter covering some strange murders that appear to be shark attacks on land. They do some light investigation and allow the story to kill multiple birds with limited stones.
Heidi attempts to curb her instincts around people who don’t deserve it. She manages to suppress her hunger around her best friend. Eventually, of course, her monster side fully takes over. It may seem like a small thing…but the arc is what separates Shark Girl from other low budget b-movies. Without the money for elaborate sequences and gore fueled payoffs…the script attaches meaning to the mayhem. It goes so far as to make Heidi’s first truly unforgivable kill someone who will complicate her relationship with Sienna. It creates a hero to fill the space Heidi vacates as she becomes the villain. There may be a cure. Sienna may no longer care to use it.
The performances in Shark Girl are better than you’d expect too. While most of the side characters are given one note to play with…they all commit to playing it. Johnston does a strong job taking Heidi from lovable to monster. Ameerah adapts to her new role well…offering a balance between doing what is right and doing what is necessary.
What you won’t get from Shark Girl is memorable gore. We’re looking at blood applied to bite marks after the fact. Attaching more purpose to the kills buys a lot of leeway. You won’t see the kills you want to…but you’ll care more than they happened in the first place. This is a key thing that low budget B-movies miss too often.
I mentioned that Shark Girl wastes almost no time. It gets to the story as quick as possible…and fills most of its 82 minutes focusing on Heidi’s journey. It does, however, stop a couple of times to pad the already short run time with bikini photo shoots. It’s a pure B-movie thing…and as relevant as it can be to the plot. But it’s also several minutes of simply stopping the story in its tracks to watch beautiful women pose for their followers. That’s not a complaint…simply an observation. Most of the economical script keeps the energy flowing in one direction. The first act detours serve up a couple of speed bumps.
Shark Girl is bold enough to leave itself open for a sequel. The result is an ending that isn’t as tidy as you’d hope it to be. Again, the script commits to character first and foremost and gets away with it. In fact, against all odds when you sit down to watch a B-movie about a girl who becomes a murderous shark person…I’d be excited to see the next chapter that Shark Girl sets up. That’s a win.
Scare Value
Look, there’s no way around the fact that I’m grading this on a curve. I’ve seen too many similarly produced movies fall into the same traps over and over again to ignore when someone does so many things right. You should know what you’re getting from a movie called Shark Girl. You go in with the expectations of a B-movie…and a B-movie is what you will get. The care put into character and meaning over unobtainable moments elevates it to a B-plus movie.
2.5/5
Shark Girl Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Fandango at Home and Amazon
