Shark Swarm (2008) Movie Review, Trailer, and Poster

U.S. 2007
Director: James A. Contner
Cast: Daryl Hannah, John Schneider, Armand Assante, John Enos III, F. Murray Abraham, Elisa Donovan
Rating: Unrated
Release Date: May 25th 2008
Running Time: 2 hours 46 minutes

The Movie Review

Shark Swarm, as the title tells clearly about it, is of course about Shark which is one the most feared animals on the planet, especially since Jaws, which was released decades ago. The legendary Jaws certainly had inspired so many filmmakers to produce movies with Shark as its main villain. Shark Swarm is not very far from that premise, with all the chaos the sharks bring. Fortunately for me, this animal horror flick is headlined by John Schneider (from Lake Placid 2 and TV show the Dukes of Hazzard), who has his own charm, thus makes this movie quite fun to watch.

Hamilton Lux (Armand Assante) is a multi-millionaire businessman who is now resides in Full Moon Bay town and starts to buy houses from the landowners. This town


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with its major population working as Fishermen, suddenly find that the sea is strangely no longer contains enough fishes, so they look upon Hamilton as their savior from poverty. Hamilton Lux has another agenda which is actually buying the city to build condominiums and apartments, but by employing devious plan, which is by spilling toxic waste to the sea to kill all the fishes. What Hamilton and his posse don't know is that the toxic waste, instead of killing the sharks, it mutates them into more vicious and hungrier creatures than ever. After that, the sharks begin to spread the terror by eating and munching those unfortunate enough to be on the sea. Only one man, who actually realizes what is really happening in his hometown, that man is Daniel Wilder (John schneider). But is he able to stop Hamilton and his posse and even furthermore save the townspeople from being fish food?

Strange enough although the title and the movie is basically about Shark attacks, but after a while the audience would be intrigued more about the struggle between the evil tycoon Hamilton Lux and the local fisherman Daniel Wilder with his family. The story begins to shift between focusing on the Sharks into the evil scheme of Lux. Which reminds me a lot of the 80s TV show like MacGyver. Well, this could be an advantage or a backfire. It's your call really. Probably knowing that general moviegoers are beginning to bore about the animal-gone-wild theme, the Shark Swarm filmmakers try to put additional plot into it. And somehow it works, the fight between Daniel and Hamilton proves to be quite interesting. Or probably the side plot is mandatory for a movie with a running length for almost 3 hours. Seeing Shark these days for more than 3 hours could be devastatingly boring for the audience.

Bearing that in mind, than the screen time for the sharks are not that much, they usually appear for just a couple of seconds merely just to eat people, after that the screen is back to either Daniel Wilder, Hamilton Lux, Professor Girdler (Murray) or Daniel's family. The gore is pretty dry for something that usually requires scary scenes of people being munched.

John Schneider, Armand Assante, and F. Murray Abraham are actually great actors, but I don't know why they want to play in this type of movie, although you could also see Murray in Blood Monkey. But mind that not, cause with their performances, Shark Swarm is helped a lot. At least Armand still caries the mafia charm with him, though sometimes over-the-top. Well after all things said and done, Shark Swarm is just another entry from the man-eater series, and is also far from being a great movie. But it might suit the fans well for watching it on your TV set.

© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com