You’ve seen this one before. Take every shark movie ever made, set the cinematic blender on chum, and voila, you’ve got Shark Attack 2 (2000, 93 minutes) and a busted blender. Which is a shame, because it takes a lot of margaritas to get through this one. But one can also pass the time by watching the hap-hazard way the thing’s edited together: Diver in murky green swimming pool sees shark. Cut to ocean footage of Great White looking menacing. Diver reacts by exhaling more bubbles. Splice in more grainy shark footage. Diver motions as if being attacked. Cue the phony Great White head to come into frame and bounce its single row of gappy choppers off the diver’s arm. Diver screams (under water) and wiggles around. FX guy releases blood into water seconds too late. Shake camera and jump cut as needed. Repeat.
The movie: Sisters are diving near Cape Town (the box says Hawaii, they lied) when suddenly one of them is gobbled down by a 16-foot Great White. Her sister, Samantha (Nikita Ager), only manages to stab the creature in the eye before madly swimming back to the boat. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous owner of Water World decides it be really, really cool to have a big ol’ shark like that for his patrons to gawk at, so he sends Dr. Nick Harris (Thorsten Kaye) out to get one. He does. It eats his assistant in front of horrified park guests. You see, there’s a rope attached to the giant hunk of meat he feeds the shark, and doggoneit, that rope gets all tangled in the guy’s feet and pulls him in. What’s more bewildering is the beast somehow ESCAPES its holding pool and heads for open sea — where it joins up with its five genetic-mutant, super-sized siblings from the first movie. Because this flick needs a love scene, Samantha joins Nick in his effort to rid the waters of these terrors, but not before the beach becomes awash with bleeding surfer meat.
Notables: Two breasts. Nine corpses. Shark cam. Chumming. One spit take. Gratuitous surfing competition. Low-rent CGI footage.
Quotables: Samantha refuses to be consoled for her sisters death, "Understand? You didn’t see Amy’s eyes. How it tore her to pieces. You have NO idea what I’m going through." This Aussie ain’t afraid of no over-grown fish, "Roy would jump in the water with a snorkel and a hand grenade." Yep, he really loves to blow stuff up, "Under water demolition explosives. Twenty pounds worth! Complete with detonator and timer. Should be enough to turn those bastards into a bloody shark smoothie."
Time codes: Samantha emotes (6:00). Little girl poses for wacky photo as victim in plywood shark’s mouth (21:11). How to get eaten alive (23:10). Budding romance montage (43:10). "Hey, where’d all these candles come from?" (1:11:00).
Final thought: As subtle as a kick in the pants. Utterly no concept of suspense. Grossly unoriginal without the benefit of even being amusing — intentionally, or otherwise.