4.8 | / 10 |
Users | 2.2 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.2 |
Seven friends who are spending a weekend at a lake house discover the waters are infested with sharks.
Starring: Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Chris Carmack, Katharine McPhee, Joel David MooreHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 59% |
Mystery | 9% |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy (on disc)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
Critics have an inexhaustible wealth of cliche metaphors at their disposal to describe the utter dullness of Shark Night: It arrives "dead in the water." It's "washed up." It "barely makes a splash" but also "totally bellyflops." It "lacks bite" and "drowns in mediocrity" and "makes Shark Attack 3: Megalodon look like Jaws." All would be appropriate. (Okay, that last one is a bit of a stretch.) Director David R. Ellis, of Snakes on a Plane infamy, has accomplished no easy feat--he's made a boring shark movie. Most serious shark film fans don't need another masterpiece on par with Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic; they just want something reasonably entertaining to tide them over until the Discovery Channel's annual "Shark Week." Something with a decent plot and well-written characters, or--failing that--at least a modicum of blood-in-the-water carnage and white-knuckle suspense. Others crave over-the-top B-movie corniness and get their aquatic kicks from the likes of Megashark Versus Giant Octopus or Shark in Venice. Both groups will yawn at Shark Night, a tame, PG-13 excursion that lacks the terrifying realism of Open Water and doesn't come close to reaching the nutty, perverse highs of Piranha 3D, the film to which it draws the most unfortunate comparisons.
Fish food...
For home video, Shark Night 3D has been downgraded to simply Shark Night, and 20th Century Fox has given no indication that a 3D Blu-ray is in the works. Perhaps the studio realized that even 3D TV owners--who are starved for new 3D releases--probably wouldn't bother with this garbage. What's especially awkward here is that there are several scenes that prominently feature imagery that's clearly supposed to be in 3D--sharks jumping out of the screen, boats jumping out of the screen, random other aquatic do-dads jumping out of the screen, etc. Flattened to two dimensions, the gimmicky hokeyness of these shots is plainly revealed. But whatever. In regular old 2D, the film features a 1080p/AVC-encoded digital- to-digital transfer that's fine but hardly spectacular. In terms of clarity, this is very much a hit or miss situation. Some shots are extremely sharp and display lots of fine, high definition detail--skin and clothing texture, defined hair and foliage--where others are a bit soft, especially ones with a lot of CGI additions. (The animatronic sharks are passably believable at times, but the digital ones always look fake.) Color is bright and sunshiny and adequately dense, but the lighting is often flat and directionless, which gives the film a cheap, almost made-for-TV look. Contrast is okay though--providing you can overlook a few instances of blown-out highlights--and black levels are as deep as they need to be. There's aren't any major compression-related distractions, but you might notice some slight banding in the blue gradient of the sky on occasion, and noise that spikes during darker scenes.
Shark Night surfaces on Blu-ray with Fox's standard DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound presentation, and the mix is as much of a mixed bag as the video quality. The main issue here is that there are scenes where the dialogue is almost completely overpowered by extremely bass-heavy music. This isn't frequent, but it does occur often enough that it's worth mentioning. When this would happen, my first instinct was to bump up the volume, but of course that just made the music louder. I'd tell you to resort to subtitles, but honestly, you're not missing much by not being able to make out the dialogue. In other respects--like surround sound implementation--the track fares better. The rear channels get used fairly often for effects and ambience, from splashes, screams, and underwater gurgles, to shrapnel that flies outward through the soundfield when the kids' boat explodes. Most of the effects are meaty and anchored by plenty of low-end rumble. When the blaring music doesn't mask the vocals--which, to be fair, is most of the time--dialog is clean and comprehensible. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, which appear in easy-to-read white lettering.
Shark Night isn't awful--it's competently filmed and features actors who do what they can with their underwritten roles--but it just doesn't deliver the kind of visceral and/or over-the-top experience that genre fans want from this sort of movie. Fox's Blu-ray presentation is decent, but I'd skip this release and look into other recent shark-related titles, like The Reef, or just save your money until Jaws makes its high definition debut this August. Shark Night just isn't worth your time.
Director's Cut
2005
2010
45th Anniversary Edition
1978
2018
2016
2013
1983
Unrated Edition
2008
2012
Original Unrated Cut
2005
2017
1977
1975
Collector's Edition
2013
2005
Remastered | Collector's Edition
1981
2017
2018
Unrated
2010
2019