What happens when a crooked mayor ignores scientists and law enforcement in order to build his dream city, Atsumi? Well, for starters, he awakens extinct sharks whose ‘soft skin’ allows them to shrink to the size of a tennis ball in order to travel through hot springs pipes and attack people in their bathrooms. Oh, and evidently those same sharks have the ability to ‘create’ hot springs all over the city, attack through them, and then make them disappear. And did I mention they can talk? If that’s not enough to give you some insight into what you’re in for with Hot Spring Shark Attack, I don’t know what else I can do for you. If that all sounds nonsensical, that’s because it is. There isn’t a serious bone in this film’s body, nor is there any effect or set piece they won’t attempt, regardless of how ridiculously cheap it might look. This is the type of film cinephiles for Japanese genre cinema live for, and the type of film regular cinephiles find confusing, making it even less likely we will embrace the insanity therein. Apart from the J-horror movement, I’ve always been somewhat soft on Japanese cinema, and I’ve never really found an access point. Hot Spring Shark Attack might have closed shut any open doors.
I just don’t get it. What is fun about this? I understand enjoying wild and unpredictable ‘nonsense cinema’, but I cannot – for the life of me – figure out who this is for other than people who love wasting 90-minutes on utter garbage. The performances are…interesting. The visual effects seem intentionally laughable. The editing is just plain bad. And the attempts to continually explain how the existence of the sharks are even possible get more and more outlandish as the film progresses, and it’s never once interesting. I genuinely do believe the best comparison is Birdemic: Shock and Terror. The sharks, here, look no better than the birds, there. Sharknado’s effects feel like Avatar compared to this dreck. And I don’t care if that is supposedly ‘part of the charm’. How is laziness charming? How is half-assing something charming? When a film is trying for greatness and fails on an epic level, like The Room or Ben and Arthur – there is something sweet and understandable about that. We all fall short. But this film isn’t trying for anything other than nonsense, and that I cannot abide.
I really want Utopia to succeed. I truly do dig what they’ve been laying down, from awards hopefuls like The Last Showgirl, insane risks like Megalopolis, and championing young filmmakers and their films, like Shiva Baby, Red Rooms, The Sweet East, and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. But then – every now and again – they release something that makes you question what’s going on in the quality control department – the woefully dull Nick Jonas Drama, The Good Half; the dreadful, A RAD Documentary – those are a couple of examples. Hot Spring Shark Attack is certainly the worst thing I’ve seen them associate with, and I understand it, to an extent. Shark movies are everywhere these days, and fans seem to eat them up, regardless of the quality. But I feel distributors have an obligation to curate with consistency and responsibility, and those who do not are laying the groundwork for the lapse of quality control. We’ve seen it, time and time again, with distributors both large and small. You’re only as good as your taste, and when your taste gets compromised, you might as well feed yourself to a shark.
I’m not certain I’m the intended audience for something like Hot Spring Shark Attack. While I love horror, aquatic horror, sharks, comedy, and over-the-top Japanese nonsense, it’s rare when I’m in the mood to experience all of those things in one movie. I’m also not sure why this film is receiving a theatrical release from Utopia, when it’s not good enough to be ‘good fun’, nor bad enough to be ‘bad fun’, nor particularly inventive or exciting in anything it’s doing. It feels like the sensibilities of Sharknado getting wrapped up in the craft level of Birdemic: Shock and Terror. But I dig what Utopia is doing, and I appreciate their willingness to take the kinds of risks only young distributors can take, so I had to see what all the fuss was about. How in the world did this scrappy little independent film break through when so many others are doomed to toil away in obscurity on Amazon and other streaming platforms? I wish I had the answer. Sadly, if Utopia keeps up this level of quality control, they’ll be joining folks like Annapurna very soon.
Rating: *1/2/***** (opening July 9th in limited release)
