Six Shark Movies On Tubi
It’s the last day of Shark Week, and if anyone hasn’t gotten their fill of these toothy creatures, they’ve come to the right place.
Do I like shark movies? Well, they’re not my favorite, but they’re also strangely addictive. No one has been able to top Spielberg’s classic, Jaws, but we all know people are sure going to try, so naturally there are a LOT of shark movies out there.
The coming of summer blockbusters usually means at least one hungry shark movie on offer, or a movie about something with giant teeth, anyway. It’s just inevitable. Last year we got the second Meg movie. This year…who knows? However, we all know we don’t have to go to the movie theater to find shark movies, and Tubi, like its fellow public domain repository, Amazon Prime, has some real doozies.
Notice I didn’t say “great.” I said doozies. These movies are naturally predictable. People do something stupid, especially if they’re vacationers, the shark pops out of the water and snaps like a Hungry Hungry Hippo, or a hapless victim gets dragged under. Blood and lots of screaming are de rigueur, and not always in that order.
However, there are certain charms to be found. Besides the supreme fakeness of all the sharks, I noticed a trend among most of the movies I watched for this article, and that is the remarkable durability of everyone’s smartphones. This seems to be typical of modern shark movies. No matter how many times characters drop their phones in the ocean, they still work perfectly and the batteries never seem to lose charge. That’s pretty impressive.
So yeah, without further ado, here we go. Among the mostly-unwatchables to be found are these six, and, well, hold on to your hats…
Noah’s Shark (2021)
There’s a shark in this movie, but he’s more of a bit player than anything. Yes, he tears people to bits, but we don’t see him very much. The rest of this thing is a sort-of Blair Witch Project ripoff about an expedition to find Noah’s Ark, only the Ark is guarded by a demon. Heh.
The level of lame in this movie is a bit hard to describe in a few sentences, but here goes: The supposedly Catholic priest thinks God is possibly a woman. The costumes look as if they were bought at Party City (the strings on the masks and fake beards are clearly visible). The CGI is awful. The shark’s dorsal fin looks as if it came from a shark floatie. It’s all played very, very seriously even though it’s all hilariously bad. Not surprisingly, the movie has a 1.7 audience rating on IMDb.
Shark Bait (2022)
A Tubi original, this hour and a half of mostly dumb is about five college students on Spring Break somewhere in Florida who get the bright idea of stealing a couple of jet skis, and then they get the even brighter idea of playing bumper cars with said jet skis. It doesn’t end well, they’re stranded out in the middle of the ocean where murderous Great Whites hang out, and it’s anyone’s guess who gets knocked off next. And yeah, it’s a knock-off. There are a few vigorous nods to Jaws in this one.
It’s not necessarily so-bad-it’s good, but it’s just kinda meh. In its favor, though, the movie does have a few howlers. For example:
“Can you fix it?”
“I majored in history!”
‘Nuff said.
Sharks of the Corn (2021)
Sharks of the Corn takes place in Kentucky, believe it or not, where residents are blaming Great White sharks for the mysterious bloody deaths of some of the locals. It all opens with highly cheesy synth music that was probably meant to rip off Jaws and ends with, among other things, a tabloid journalist singing “Show Me the Way To Go Home.” And it’s all interspersed with random shots of Stonehenge or random stock footage that has nothing to do with the story. Like a baby eating dinner, floating rubber ducks or horses galloping across a field. I am not kidding.
Why this thing is set in Kentucky is a head-scratcher seeing as Kentucky is completely landlocked, but there’s a good explanation for that little technicality, and this thingie claims to be based on true events. There’s also completely gratuitous nudity in the first ten minutes or so. I call BS. Weirdly ludicrous, overlong, haphazard BS.
No Shark (2022)
A woman, Chase, visits twelve beaches around New York City hoping to realize her dream of being eaten by a shark, or at least that’s more or less what the Tubi description says. We get an hour and fifty minutes of internal monologue from Chase, who seems pretty full of herself and is unabashedly condescending.
This isn’t a movie. It’s an audiobook. And a pretty self-important one at that.
We don’t know why this woman wants to get eaten by a shark, but she thinks it’s an important way to die. There’s no dialogue. It all sounds like a creative writing assignment, the kind students turn in when they really want to impress the teacher, usually loaded with too many metaphors and similies.
However, there is no shark. Anywhere. Our heroine doesn’t even get into the water most of the time. Nope. She just sits on the beach and looks out pensively, hoping today is her day. Why a shark would skip all the swimmers and chomp Miss High And Dry is anyone’s guess, but either way, she and the movie are major letdowns.
Jurassic Shark 3: Seavenge (2023)
Brought to us by the same folks who treated us to Noah’s Shark, this third of three Jurassic Shark movies involves art thieves, late-90s webcams, models, photographers who don’t know how to shoot photos, and grumpy cameramen who end up plummeting to their deaths in shark-infested waters. Oh, and the shark can vaporize helicopters and float on land.
Where to begin? The floatie shark fin makes another appearance. The movie seems to confuse lakes with oceans. The acting and dialogue are hilariously awful, and the filming is even worse. The camera is always angled upwards, for one thing, and who the heck films through someone’s armpit? Ew. And continuity is a thing. We go from a lake to stock footage of a generic beach to what looks like Alaska to a farm to an old shack to a warehouse. The characters go from falling in the lake to falling in a swimming pool, and the really amazing thing is, for a big chunk of the movie they never leave the dock.
I don’t know if these people were trying to be funny and I don’t care. I have to see the other two Jurassic Shark movies. If they’re as absurd as this one, the badness will be totally worth it.
Blind Waters (2023)
This movie says it’s a Tubi original, but the credits say Asylum. We’re gonna split the difference, though, because while Blind Waters isn’t so-bad-it’s-good enough to be a typical Asylum film, it’s still not great.
It follows a young couple, Weston and Valentina, who go scuba-diving with a rented boat, only to find there’s a man-eating shark making the rounds. The shark capsizes their boat and they have to get to a nearby island, only to meet up with a guy who’s secretly a murderer. Oh, and Valentina’s vision is damaged after hitting her head when the boat capsized.
So yeah, the movie’s not terrible. It’s just a little slow. Weston and the murderer, whose name is Gabe, have some pretty big derpy moments, too. In one scene they argue over the best way to get a sailboat off the rocks when they could just wait for the tide to come in and float the thing. Groan.
All of these movies are currently streaming on Tubi. Rated TV-MA.
My grades: F (Noah’s Shark, Sharks of the Corn, Jurassic Shark 3: Seavenge), D (Shark Bait), C (No Shark, Blind Waters)
Principal Casts: Holly Earl, Jack Trueman, Catherine Hannay, Bill Weedon, Cody Clarke, Nancy Pop, Jeff Kirkendall, Ryan Dalton, Jamie Morgan, Jada Sanchez, Tim Hatch, Shannon Stockin, Ford Windstar, Steve Guynn, Meghan Carrasquillo, Noam Sigler, Francisco Angelini
Directors: Mark Polonia (Noah’s Shark, Jurassic Shark 3), James Nunn (Shark Bait), Cody Clarke (No Shark), Tim Ritter (Sharks of the Corn), Anthony C. Ferrante (Blind Waters)
Writers: Aaron Drake (Jurassic Shark 3), Bando Glutz (Jurassic Shark 3), Cody Clarke (No Shark), John Oak Dalton (Noah’s Shark), Ned Gregory Smith (Noah’s Shark), Tim Ritter (Sharks of the Corn), Steven Kang (Sharks of the Corn), Ron Bonk (Sharks of the Corn), Anthony C. Ferrante (Blind Waters)