Before I embarked on the epic journey of sharksploitation fuckery commonly known as “my Saturday”, I looked up some of the cast of Sand Sharks. I like to be prepared for my blog because I am like…professional. We have Corin Nemec who has been in some cinematic classics such as Mansquito and Rottentail, the latter which is about a half man, half rabbit monster. Then we have Brooke Hogan, the boob-forward daughter of Hulk, and star of 2-Headed Shark Attack. As I read the cast roster, I spied the name Edgar Allan Poe IV who shockingly is really related to you-know-who. I googled him faster than you can say “Nevermore” to find that the dude was in Cape Fear and My Girl. He’s an actual thespian. So maybe this movie will be amazing? LOL. Just kidding.
What Sand Sharks is, however, is a super fun homage to pretty much any shark movie known to mankind. The plot draws heavily from Jaws, sometimes almost to the point of copyright infringement, with some spatterings of Jaws 3, Deep Blue Sea, Dinoshark and many others. White Sands is an island with a shark attack past, trying to recover economically. Sleaze-bag son of the mayor, Jimmy, wants to throw a Burning Man on the beach to lift up this poor community. But there are people being eaten by a shark that swims through sand so…that sucks. The local cops bring in Dr. Sandy Powers, played by Hogan, to unconvincingly do science stuff and figure all this nonsense out.
The town hall scene (among a few others) is practically a verbatim copy of the Jaws one. Even Angus, the crazy fisherman guy who offers to kill the shark for ten grand spouts “For that, I’ll bring you the head…good and dead.” Ooh, we are circling real close to litigation, fellas. They close the beach for 24 hours and end up blowing the shark into smithereens. So yay! The stupid festival is back on!
Meanwhile, Dr. Boobs figures out that a tooth recovered from the exploded fishie is a baby tooth from a prehistoric sand tiger shark. And check this out, you guys! Their skin gives them a hydrodynamic advantage in sand because they have little suction cups that adhere to the grains of sand and suck the moisture out so they can swim through the…oh boy.
Anyhoo, the festival goes on and “thousands” of young douchebags descend onto the beach. In reality there are about 20 extras clumped into the shot. Jimmy sees another attack and knows that there are more hungry sharks but keeps his pie hole shut so he can make money off the chum who are partying at the festival. Not sure how much he expected to make off 20 people. Even with the sharks, it’s still a better experience than Fyre Fest, am I right?
The spiky leviathans, now amassed in great numbers, rip the young hipsters a new one in delightfully fun ways. Body parts and gore are strewn all over the beach. One of the cops gets bitten in half. Dr. Boobs is running around with a squirt bottle for no reason. Yah, things go sideways.
Angus pops back up, thank goodness, to bring some levity back into this movie by saying things such as “They’ve tasted blood and they’ll keep coming back for more like a porker at a cupcake buffet.” Bless you, Angus. The remaining group of survivors concoct a plan to lure the sharks into a spot using Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries and melt the sand into glass with a flamethrower. Ya know, as one does in these situations.
Does it work? Is there a surprise ending? Will we be set up for a sequel? To all of these questions, I say “yes”. Also “no”. I found myself really liking this movie and now I don’t even know who I am anymore. Just watch the damn thing. It’s fun.
Director: Mark Atkins
Where to watch: Amazon Prime
Broken Nails
Splatterpunk nominated author Susan Snyder’s debut chapbook of poetry.