REVIEW: Shark Lake (2015) Is Whale-Shit Bad

As long as Dolph Lundgren keeps making terrible movies, they will continue to get terrible reviews.  At least from those of us with the persistence to keep trekking the bowels of VOD hell.  I like the big guy a lot, we all do, so I feel like I have to follow him on this journey.  And unlike the fanboys out there (why are you shitting on that movie I was looking forward to bro, but haven’t seen yet myself? Fuck you!) I feel that Lundgren has to be told, nothing good comes from these movies.  This one, Shark Lake, is basically whale shit.  Although if you take nothing else away from this review, take this trivia: Whale shit is actually highly valuable.  Did you know that capturing whale shit can go for more than $10,000 by the pound?  Look it up if you don’t believe me.

Now with that out of the way, Shark Lake sees Lundgren drive his van into a lake during a (not-so) high speed police chase.  We don’t see the crash because they couldn’t afford it, they just cut to some disturbed water.  In the back of the van, Lundgren, a petty criminal, unleashes a beast into the lake that he was illegally transporting.  Some gangsters aren’t happy with this, who want the valuable beast back, and neither is local law enforcement, which isn’t pleased when it begins feeding on local co-eds.  This does the rounds of other similar movies, but fails to rip off their good points.  It’s Jaws without the horror and Lake Placid without the dark humour.

The acting is the real horror here.  Sara Lane’s performance, Lundgren’s babymama and playing a cop investigating chaffed meat floating up on the shores, puts in the mother of all dire acting performances, the cast of nobodies filling out the rest of the roster being not far behind.  The only exception is once again, Dolph Lundgren.  He has charisma, no doubt, and somewhat chews on his role like he often does.  Pity then that he’s not much in the movie.  I won’t say anything about the effects and such, we’re not here to shit on a movie that was always going to struggle in that regard.  My problem is that it plays things straight as a rod, with excruciating melodrama featuring Lane carrying way too much of the movie.  If you’re going to do an F-league beast thriller, stick your tongue in your cheek, buy a rubber fish pay many women to get naked.

Pity about the nice scenery, they didn’t use that properly either.