A.k.a. Shark Island. Another dispensable movie for which one has no reason to waste their time on, but which, if watched, is about as easy to digest as baby food and about as satisfying — unless, of course, you are into paraphilic infantilism.
In the good ol' days when cheap flicks with titles as low brow as this were shown at grindhouses, such a title would have at least guaranteed gore and guts and gratuitous nudity alongside the bad acting and bad direction and cheesy effects and lack of logic. But nowadays, when films with titles like this get made for (and shown on) cable TV, guess which of the previously listed seven aspects are lacking and which are not.
For that, Zombie Shark does offer a few surprises not usually found in low-grade, by-the-number product of this caliber: for one (Spoilers!) the token Afro-American character of note, Lester (Roger J. Timber), survives the film; furthermore, the deaths do not necessarily happen in the normal order expected, one death is particularly ironic in that the victim dies during a rare act of altruism, and the final death is truly unexpected in more ways than one.
Trailer to
Zombie Shark:
But lest you think Zombie Shark might be in any way "good", that is not the case. The TV flick simply has some pleasant qualities — including the pleasantly game lead trio of well-cleavaged females with distinct, fully developed personalities: Bridgette the Bathing Suit (Becky "firm but one assumes pliant" Andrews of Ozark Sharks [2016 / trailer]), and the similarly assumedly firm but pliant siblings, Amber the elder and unloved former problem child (Cassie Steele of Paint It Red [2019 / trailer]) and Sophie the younger little Miss Perfect (Sloane Coe of Ghost Shark [2013 / trailer]) — that make the movie somewhat less crappy, and thus much easier to watch, than many other films of its ilk.
The rather obtuse non-story concerns how the three of them, along with Amber's hapless beau Jenner (Ross Britz of Aftermath [2014 / trailer]), come, off season, to the north and unpopular side of Redplum Island, a resort island on the Gulf of Mexico, where the experiments in flesh-regeneration conducted by the well-minded Dr. Palmer (Laura Cayouette of Flight of the Living Dead [2007] and Hell Ride [2008 / trailer]) go off the rail when her main test subject, the highly intelligent shark Bruce, escapes and begins spreading a zombie virus which, as some viruses naturally can, jumps from shark to human.
In any event, even as their numbers dwindle — guess which hapless fellow is the unexpected first to die (excluding the surfer in the opening scene, waiting for waves on a waveless expanse of water) — our intrepid trio and Lester and military man Maxwell Cage (Jason London of Blood Ties [1991] and The Rage: Carrie Two [1999]) try to save their skin and the day and to stop the virus from spreading.
As mentioned previously, despite a relative high body count Zombie Shark lacks gore and guts, the blood and visceral all being not only substandard CGI but seriously non-copious — but then, seeing how poorly the sharks and shark-swimming scenes are rendered, it would seem all such scenes were possibly made in the CGI 101 class of the local community college. Nudity would have seriously enlivened the movie, but any boobs in focus anywhere in the proceedings are displayed as deep cleavage or in a bikini — women with well-developed personalities have no need to get nekkid in cinematic endeavors like this one. (Indeed, it would seem that in contemporary flicks like this one, much like per-marital sex in the slashers of the '70s and '80s, getting nekkid — even demurely — means guaranteed death.)
The narrative of Zombie Sharks, supplied by one Gregg Mitchell (Snakehead Swamp [2014 / TV spot]), like the special effects, is sorely lacking in everything but holes, and even within the realm of "TV movie" the somewhat padded movie suffers from a noticeable vitamin deficiency. Its saving grace, aside from its strong cast of females, is that it keeps throwing the viewer unanticipated curve balls. From the first character of note to die and onwards, the deaths have a humorous kick and are often unexpected, with some of them even working up to a delayed visual punchline. (Still, one too many minor or non-character has obvious problems not laughing at the stupidity of the procedures they are involved in.)
Incongruently enough, however, for all the movie's obvious aim for bad-movie laughs á la the whole contemporary killer shark genre, the unexpected resolution of Zombie Sharks is a head-scratcher and gut-puncher, one that only fits in that it is as bleakly ironic as much of the film is humorously ironic — and stupid.
Is Zombie Sharks a good film? Shit, how can you even ask a question like that about a movie with that title? It's a barely passable if majorly flawed lump of lard laced with an occasional surprise, some fun humor, and a truly unexpected ending, but it hardly offers enough to make anyone want to watch it a second time. But for a one-off with a six-pack and smoke, it's passable contemporary fare. Director Misty Talley, in any event, has since gone on to three subsequent shark films, the last being the Christmas season-appropriate Santa Jaws [2018 / trailer]), all with nary a naked breast in sight.
As an extra:
Zombie shark scene from the Netfux series
Zom 100 – Bucket List of the Dead (2023):
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