The Shark Film Office

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) Director: Hans Horn TC4P Rating: 4/9 Shark appearance: quite surprisingly, in dialogue only -- and the constant implied threat that they may show up, which they never do... I understand. Really, I do. I get the basic appeal when an Open Water or a Saw comes out, and the world flips out because, by and large, the genre films we had gotten for the brief period preceding the respective debuts of those films had been a soggy lot overall. Something slightly off-kilter from that with which we had been deluged seemed refreshing -- it's the reason why the world shat bricks when The Blair Witch Project went "Boo!," giving half the audience the chills, and the other half motion sickness. Me? Open Water was indeed a breath of fresh air... for a very short while. But then a pair of completely self-absorbed lead characters brought me to the early conclusion that mere death by exposure, hypothermia and drowning was simply too nice a way out for these...

L'avventura (1960) Dir.: Michelangelo Antonioni TC4P Rating: 9/9 Appearance: dialogue only; unseen species of Mediterranean frequency. In the traditional and monstrous fashion of most fictional sharks, the appearance of this "pescecane" (as it is referred to in the Italian of what is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest films of all time, L'avventura ) comes out of nowhere to rupture the plot violently and infuse images of its "horrid" self into the thoughts of the film's idle rich. An idyllic summer voyage to the islands in the Aeolian Sea off Sicily, in which a boat full of the emotionally empty languish in their own ennui and the lies they tell themselves and others, all under the pretense of having a good time, turns tragic when the most conflicted of the lot, Anna, completely disappears, both from the island they are visiting, and from the movie altogether. Before she disappears, however (and just before they decide to dock...

Sirens (1994) Dir.: John Duigan TC4P Rating: 6/9 Species: Not described, though obviously of a "man-eating" variety. Appearance: Via brief dialogue only. No actual shark appears in Sirens , which some may remember (or were drawn to initially) because the film’s chief draw was marvelous display for rampant female nudity of the Australian variety. Generally land-bound, the film manages to work a shark into the dialogue, as one of their number is mentioned as an instrument of paternal destruction as Portia de Rossi's character, Giddy, explains her past to Tara Fitzgerald's clergyman's wife, Estella: Giddy: "Mine was taken by a shark." Estella: "God! How awful!" Giddy: " Yeah, yeah. Wasn't much left of him. So I was brought up mainly by my mother." This dialogue is rather tossed off in Sirens , and has no real impact on the remainder of the film.  In deference to this tone, thankfully no shark shows up physically...