The Shark Film Office

Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens (2016) Dir.: Anthony C. Ferrante TC4P Rating: 4/9 Species: great white shark, hammerheads, goblin shark, leopard sharks, many unidentified species, and a surprise species that I refuse to give away until a much later date. While The Shark Film Office was started way back in 2006, I really let it lay fallow for many years while I first concentrated on other sites, and then got sucked into a personal vortex of depression and dark thoughts of suicide (which are far more insidious than light, happy thoughts of suicide). Since I didn't finally get The Shark Film Office going full force until earlier this year, it was purely coincidence that I skipped over a particular phenomenon that is largely responsible for the absurd amount of low-budget, goofball shark films that are thrown at us today: the Sharknado series. Premiering in 2013, and with a sequel released in each of the past three years, the first Sharknado film made directly for the Syfy Channel n...

Ozark Sharks   (2016) Dir.: Misty Talley TC4P Rating: 3/9 Species: Bull sharks. Backwoods terror is a mainstay category within the horror genre, and so I find it unsurprising that attacks of the rural variety should start occurring in the shark film subgenre as well. There have already been any number of more sea monster-oriented films taking place out in the country, and snakehead films have been popular in recent years as well. And, of course, gator and croc films have always been in abundance, and those, naturally, come with the requisite amount of stock hillbilly characters ready to whoop it up and have their shotgun-bearing arms bitten off or to suddenly get eaten after they have decided to dynamite the swamp to "git whatever 'tis out there that ate ol' Cooter las' night!" So, when I heard there was a film being premiered during this year's Sharknado Week on the Syfy Channel a couple of weeks ago called Ozark Sharks, I thought that I knew what I wa...

Planet of the Sharks  (2016) Dir.: Mark Atkins TC4P Rating: 4/9 Species: mutated great white with amplified telepathic abilities as Alpha leader of all sharks in the film; various non-mutated species of sharks, specifically hammerheads and bulls can be spotted. The poster immediately to the right of this text speaks heavily of two influences.  The first obvious influence, from even the swiftest sideways glance, is  Jaws , which copies (though in a far more gruesome manner) the original film's image of the gaping maw of a monstrous shark rising up from the deep to swallow humanity whole. From the second influence –  the title of the film itself, Planet of the Sharks –  one can only surmise that someone has finally taken the logical leap in upping the renewed interest in the popular Planet of the Apes franchise, flooded the entire planet, and simply replaced the original concept's primates with sharks. I figured that such a thing might happen at some point a...