“Endurance” is the single word review my girlfriend gave after we watched Ice Sharks. In order to finish this film, endurance is indeed required, because unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as exciting as its title suggests.
I mean it’s obviously still great because it exists and is about a team of scientists based in Antarctica being hunted down by a pack of bloodthirsty sharks, but is it up to Shark in Venice levels or Zoombies levels? I’m not too sure.
Films I refer to/potentially spoil in this article:
- Ice Sharks (dir. Emile Edwin Smith, 2016)
- Shark in Venice (dir. Danny Lerner, 2008)
- Zoombies (dir. Glenn Miller, 2016)
- Sharkenstein (dir. Mark Polonia, 2016)
- Unbreakable (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
- Glass (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2019)
- The Irishman (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2019)
Firstly, the positives. Compared with similar films within the shark horror-trash-disaster movie sub-genre, the animation of the sharks is actually on the better end of the s**t spectrum. This feat, however, is not that remarkable as it has little competition; the stock footage of sharks from blatant nature documentaries from Shark in Venice and the rubber toy shark from Sharkenstein poses little threat. In Ice Sharks, the sharks are vicious and scary and decently-ish animated and I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what the production team were going for.
What Ice Sharks is missing, however, is a loveable band of heroes. I’ve learnt with these films not to get overly excited about what the title suggests. You’d expect a film called Ice Sharks to be full shark attacks through ice, right? Or at least featuring ice-related kills, like tipping icebergs onto people etc? There’s a handful in the first act, but before long this gets defaulted to your typical underwater-shark-in-their-natural-environment film, the ice becoming an obsolete factor. The same went for Shark in Venice which features sharks as more of a subplot if anything, placing more interest on the hunt and battle for Venetian treasure. Unfortunately, the film becomes a series of swim-here-to-get-this-and-then-come-back-and-then-go-back-again-and-come-back. But, as we’ve also learnt, you can’t complain about these films. Not seriously anyway.
Image Credit: Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life
This isn’t to say, however, that Ice Sharks becomes a typical underwater shark film (the “underwater shark” is also known as the “regular shark”). The sharks, pi**ed off at the scientists for being alive for so long, actually sink their Arctic laboratory base. They do this by coordinating an attack that is similar to the way killer whales cut off their seal prey from the mainland; not identical bear in mind, but similar. The sharks swim at speed in circles and use their razor-sharp fins to cut through the ice. They succeed and detach the humans from the mainland which causes their base to drift and, in due course, sink to the sea bed, trapping the scientists in an air bubble. This is amazing. The sharks did something way beyond what you initially thought they’d be capable of doing, but for some crushing, depressing and devastating reason, the sharks demonstrate no further signs of intellect. It’s like reaching the climactic battle of a film (let’s pick Bruce Willis’ character in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable and Glass as a totally random comparison) only to have the hero who has been so iconic and strong and smart in the first part to just seem to give up and consequently fail and die in the most unimpressive way in the second part. You’d think by bringing the humans underwater to their environment the sharks would now have the upper-hand to well and truly reign terror on them. Instead, they seem to give up and f**k off. The rest of the film sees the survivors swim here and there to do things and come back and do more things, but these swimming sequences are never as dangerous and exciting as you’d like them to be.
This wouldn’t be nearly as problematic if it weren’t for the boring characters that we are now trapped underwater with. At least Shark in Venice had a hero that simultaneously rocked a painful lack of charisma with a non-existent range of facial expressions that when combined, became wondrous to watch, even when there were no sharks on screen. And, when the shark action is lacking, you want the back-up to be just as enjoyable. In places mostly during the first act, Ice Sharks does contain as much trashy shark gore-porn as other trashy shark gore-porn films do, and when it lands it certainly delivers. Ultimately though, when the stars of the screen (the CGI sharks) aren’t around, Ice Sharks lacks the catchphrase-worthy and over-acted performances that other films have offered in the past. There is one line at the beginning however which is brilliant, where an Arctic-native hunter somehow loses a fingernail in a battle with a shark, and as he’s dragged to his icy ocean doom tomb, he still manages to include an “Agh, my finger!” in between his terrified cries for help. That was funny.
Loved:
- Ice Sharks
- “Agh, my finger!”
- Excellent shark CGI (if regular excellent CGI classes as the de-aged 76-year old Robert De Niro ‘fight’ scene in The Irishman)
Didn’t Love so much:
- Boring characters
- Tired sharks
- Needs more Stephen Baldwin
filmmish 