Shark Week (the movie): 7 days, 7 sharks? Hell yes!

I love this movie. Honestly, this wasn’t my first time seeing Shark Week. It was more like my 4th or 5th. The online rating of this movie is misleading. Shit, I haven’t seen so many lone stars since my last bender on sixth street. In my opinion, this is a super duper fun one. Why, you ask? Well, lemme tell ya.

The film opens with a bloodied man chained to a pool, dripping his fluids into the water. He is screaming one name…Tiburon! Then, a smoking man in a fedora and crumpled suit enters the scene. He throws the key to the man’s shackles into the pool and gives him 15 seconds to retrieve it before a shark is released. We learn this madman doesn’t play fair, and we get treated to our first shark attack kill.

So far so good, right?

Now a bunch of people are collected and brought to Tiburon’s island. One by one, their hoods are removed and the screen fills with data about each character. There is a prosecutor, cop, journalist, unemployed junkie, accountant, judge, henchman, and paramedic. Tiburon and his girlfriend Elena come slinking down the stairs. Elena looks like her left eyelid’s been slipped a mickey. Hot mess. But that’s not what’s important here. This is when we get schooled on the plot of this little sharksploitation gem.

Tiburon wants revenge on this merry band of misfits. One guy spouts off at the mouth immediately and is tossed into a pool of witty bitty adorable shark pups who proceed to devour him in a frenzy of gory glee. Dawwww. A cute little skull icon appears over his picture on the screen. I mean, that’s a nice touch.

One of my favorite parts of this movie is Tiburon’s speech about how these pups are less than two months old yet have more sophistication than a human 20 times their age. Elena chimes in with “Sharks are life…they’re gods.”

Now do you see why I dig this movie so much? Those crazy motherfuckers are right!

Tiburon devised a game. Each day, for a week, they will encounter a trap containing a different shark species. If they fail, they’re chum. If they succeed, they get a tool to help them survive the next shark. Make it to the end, and freedom is yours. This Jigsaw of the Sea is a fantastic character. He looks like Sean Connery was dropped on his head, causing him to lose his accent, acting skills and his entire supply of Just For Men. He enjoys spontaneous harmonica and always is clutching a string of pearls. Does this mean something? I have no idea.

While they proceed through Tiburon’s maze of horrors, the group goes through a bunch of character development and we learn why the madman is enacting such toothy revenge. They turn on each other, find love, sacrifice, and die. Blah blah blah. It’s not that this part of the movie’s plot is bad, it’s just not what we’re here for.

Throughout their ordeal, Tiburon is watching on CCTV and goading them through a loudspeaker. Mostly, he lays down some really flawed science facts about sharks. Usually shark misinformation pisses me off, but I can overlook it for this movie. What I cannot overlook is the burning question of where the hell these cameras and loudspeakers are. The people could be in a flat field devoid of vegetation or in the middle of the sea and this dude has an invisible camera crew right up their asses? Where? How?

Let’s get to the good stuff. There are seven shark species, one per day. Why just one per day? Not sure. They’re sharks, not multivitamins. Anyway, I will happily list the species our group has to overcome for their freedom, but I refuse to tell you if or how they escape. You simply must watch it to find out.