Huge Shark aka Red Water – 2021
Huge Shark is a way better title than Red Water. Besides, there’s already another shark film named Red Water with Lou Diamond Philipps and Kristy Swanson from 2003. They are not connected in any way, shape or form. Huge Shark is a Chinese film and to begin with I’m quite impressed! Sadly I had to watch this dubbed into English which makes it harder to really get into the characters I think. You need two people, both the actual actor and the voice actor doing the dubbing. That’s often not the case.
There’s also no way to be sure that the spoken dialog is really what the original dialog was meant to be. Not that I distrust the translators but there are subtle differences in phrasing and idioms that might get lost in translation. But we have to go with what you’ve got.
The teaser draws me into wanting to see more, even if it seems kinda obvious that they’re trying to score some points by having the women wearing thongs like swimwear. There are some low angels as well so I think that was on purpose and not a product of being a marine film where almost every scene is spent on or near the water.
There are some beautiful scenes and the shark itself doesn’t look too bad to begin with. It’s always like that, isn’t it? As long as you only see small sequences and that the creature stays mostly under water it seems alright. But when you are trying to scare us more by longer sequences or by showing more of the shark it just doesn’t hold up.
I think I’ve seen every element used in this movie before. People thrown overboard were not able to climb back to the ship again, a rowboat turned upside down, swimming to get something out in the water and just in time making it back before the shark attacks, the distant boat not noticing the flares and so on. Every cliche there is I would say.
Therefore you might not be surprised when one by one of the original group of people falls victim to the shark. Yes, there are a few other things as well, but to mention them would create kind of a spoiler so I won’t.
Most of it is entertaining as a shark movie, and it’s not as silly as many of the sharksploitation movies that seem designed to be just that – silly. You know, films like Ghost Shark, Sand Shark, Snow Shark etc. There is a little more serious tone to it. But in the end I’m glad it’s just a little over one hour in length. They can barely keep the nerve up for that long, I can’t imagine what would happen if they tried it för another half hour.
But I also think there’s a saving grace. There are a few scenes that are very funny, and intentionally so, a deliberate play with the cliches. There is also the absolute ending scene. Don’t miss that! That thing really starts to matter on another level!
