Shark Night: Blu-Ray with Digital Copy: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Review by JAM
Long forgotten secrets lie beneath the waves of a daughter’s return home to a place she had been long running from in this enjoyable bloody romp through a college retreat in the saltwater bayou.
Sara Paxton stars as Sara Palski, the college girl who invites her friends over for a weekend of fun and frolicking at the family’s house on the lake. Little does any of them know that her past is coming back to haunt them all. Dustin Milligan plays Nick plays the one kid who wouldn’t care about what her past threw at them as he seems to be relatively infatuated with her as he prepares himself for medical school. Otherwise we have the typical Final Destination group of characters, the jock with the amazing future (Sinqua Wells), his soon to be fiancee (Alyssa Diaz), the comedy relief (Joel David Moore), the hot tattooed coed (Katharine McPhee), and the artistic nude model (Chris Zylka). Throw in the evil masterminds who have filled this salt water lake with many species of sharks (not really a spoiler since the movie is called Shark Night!) and you have a classic B-movie matinee type movie.
JAMS Ink on Shark Night
With a PG-13 rating, the blood and gore is toned down and the nudity is nearly non-existent (Chris Zylka’s character show his bare buttocks in a art class scene for some reason, otherwise just bikinis galore) which allows it to keep a campy feeling without going too far overboard. Characters die through a variety of shark attacks, the masterminds of the attacks are relatively transparent from the beginning, and the survivors are the ones you expected. Yet this movie entertains throughout. You feel the sharks around you, you know they’re coming, yet you find yourself waiting for that final attack out of nowhere.
Katharine McPhee, thank you for your death scene. That sounds morbid, but the scene stood out a bit, maybe as much for its campiness as the death itself, but glowing sharks, a defiant McPheever, and a well choreographed death scene all added up to a memorable portion of this movie.
BLU-RAY Aspects
If you are looking for clarity of color with your Blu-ray copy, you will be sorely disappointed. Much of the movie is done in a brown dusky palate to simulate the dark dankiness of the bayou, and that feeling is conveyed in the scenes in the movie. I do like the Blu-ray though for the clarity in a few sped up scenes, allowing for brake light/daylight colors to shine well and for the shark scenes. The animation of the added sharks remains strong in the copy so I recommend BLU-RAY YES on this one.
EXTRAS
Some fun extras are included on this one, maybe especially fun since they involve sharks and kill scenes. Speaking of which, the Shark Attack! Kill Machine is basically a combination of the shark scenes from the film including the attacks. The Fake Sharks, Real Scares is a cool look at the ways they brought the sharks of this movie to life, both with animatronically and with digitized versions. You want to know some fun facts about sharks? The Survival Guide shares factoids after kills to satisfy your morbid curiosity. And finally we have Ellis Island, the chance for the director to shine a bit and get his moment in the sun. Oh yeah, and you get the chance for this movie to travel with you anywhere as you get a digital copy as well. Sharks on the phone! Woohoo!
I forgot to mention one more extra that is not listed on the packaging. At the end of the credits, the cast has put together an music video for the movie. It's awesome. It's campy yet cool, interesting and odd, just the perfect combination to go with this fun shark attack movie.
Remember check out this review and more from JAM at www.hollywoodteenzine.com for teens and tweens, and at http://jammoviereviews.blogspot.com for movies of all genres and ages.
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