This movie got on my bad side almost immediately. It opens with a man on a dog sled racing across the Arctic ice. I just kept thinking “Do NOT kill off those dogs. Do NOT do it.” Sure enough…now I already hate this movie.
A team of researchers live in a giant concrete laboratory perched upon an ever-thinning ice sheet. This film may have a hint of a crumb of some sort of statement on climate change, but it lacks the intelligence to back that up. Any semblance of believability is masked behind one of the most boring shark movies ever.
Why in the name of all that is holy do we need to witness every painstaking detail of every activity any character does? Someone is plugging a leak? We see three full minutes of a guy using a screwdriver. Need to make a radio call? We hear someone attempt to make contact 45 times, then pass the radio to another character who tries another 45 times. Dude needs to suit up for a dive? Let’s make sure we see him zipping every zipper and flapping every flap.
If you squint, the entire movie is just someone filming a company’s team-building exercise where they all got to go to a panic escape room for the afternoon. With an underwater lab theme. Except Joan from Accounting has waaaaaay more personality than all of this movie’s characters combined.
Oh yah, the movie is called Ice Sharks so what about the sharks, sister?
They are a new evolutionary offshoot of Greenland Sharks, or “Greenies”. Sigh. At least they tried a new kind of shark. The kills? There are a few but they are rare. These sharks really suck at eating people. Mostly they slowly swim around the potential victim and wait for him or her to be saved. Perhaps they too are nodding off from watching screwdrivers and zippers ad nauseum. I hear ya, ice sharks.
The sharks’ dorsal fins slice through the thin Arctic ice like a razor blade through cream cheese (how I make my morning bagels is my own business, thank you). They send the lab off to sea on an ice flow. The lab ends up sinking to the bottom of the sea. And really not much happens in between. Just zippers and tools. Tools and zippers. A woman with a really big head tries to radio for help. A guy dives a lot. There is ice kelp.
The ending gets a little fun. And by a little fun I mean one scene where a shark is stuck in one of the lab’s windows as the building is lifted from the sea by a rescue ship. I may or may not have emitted the slightest amused grunt. But that is all this movie got from me. One grunt.
So if you are looking to hone your DIY home improvement skills and really impress Betty the hot receptionist at the next work retreat, this movie is for you. If it is a shark movie you seek…not so much.
See ya next time!
Director: Emile Edwin Smith
Where to watch: Amazon Prime