Review for Shark Killer

I’m such a sucker for this stuff. Even knowing that ‘Sharknado’ would be the ludicrous low-budget, CGI infested mess that it was I had to have it. Having scoffed my way through that, when ‘Sharknado 2’ came out I felt like I needed to see that too. And ‘Ghost Shark’. All pale nods to the wonder of ‘Jaws’ and the heady world of the low-budget b-movie, even the god-awful acting, stilted dialogue and preposterous happenings didn’t put me off checking them out.


So when the PR release for ‘Shark Killer’ came through (with its ‘Forget Sharknado, it’s time to get back in the water’ tag) I sort of knew what to expect yet went for it anyway.


So it was pretty much what I expected up to a point. Turgid dialogue, principal characters that you couldn’t give two hoots about, a convoluted narrative and … well, sharks.


What I hadn’t expected was so few sharks (in common with ‘Jaws’ very little airtime is given to the silvery beasts of the water) and the film to be set, for the most part in South Africa. The story is actually more about the theft of the world’s biggest natural diamond than it is about sharks. But the fact that a shark bit off and swallowed an arm and hand that was holding the diamond gives you a clue to why sharks are featured at all.
Written and directed on a shoe-string by Sheldon Wilson (Shallow Ground, Scarecrow) the bulk is filmed on location in Cape Town, SA.


Chase Walker (Derek Theler – Baby Daddy) is the hero of the piece; a shark killer by trade and a super-fit surfer dude who bags as many ladies as he does giant fish. The film opens in what purports to be Hawaii in either a flagrant rip-off of ‘Jaws’, or a parodied homage to the great film, with a local Mayor insisting that the beaches are now safe from man-eating sharks after a big white is caught. Naturally he’s wrong and just as a Jaws style shark is about to snack on a bikini-clad babe, he takes to the water (like Ron Ely in the Tarzan TV series if you’re old enough to remember that), brandishing a knife with which he will single-handedly kill the shark.


We then cut to him waking up in bed with the rescued girl by a knock on his door. Butt naked, he answers the door to find a lady called Jasmine (Erica Cerra – Eureka, Blade: Trinity) who asks him to go with her to a mission in Cape Town. Naturally he picks up some shorts and a t-shirt and moments later they’re on their way.


When he gets to Cape Town he discovers he has actually been summoned by none other than his adoptive brother Jake (Paul du Toit) who has a job for him; to track down the shark that has swallowed the world’s largest diamond and to kill it.

Naturally he needs some assistance and he chooses Jasmine who is initially put off by his arrogance. She’s a lawyer after all. However, they’re somehow thrown together on this tough mission, made tougher because they’re not the only people working to track the jewel.


NixNix (Arnold Vosloo – The Mummy, Blood Diamond) a scarred abd ruthless drug dealer, is among them and that can only mean trouble of the worst sort. Cue lots of fisticuff fights, rudimentary martial arts and knife and gun battles. Oh – and a few close and dangerous encounters with sharks.

There is a lot of sparky word-play between the arrogant but frightfully good looking Chase and Jasmine, though you won’t need a crystal ball to figure out that they get it on before the end titles roll.



There’s actually quite a lot of action and plenty of bloody violence, meaning this should certainly rest at the upper-end of its 15 rating, though I suspect its natural target audience won’t be much above that age – at least in terms of mental maturity.

It’s diverting enough but its contrived casting and plot never quite seem to ignite – maybe down to budget. The fact that the two leads look like models merely adds to the fact that this feels more like OK TV than a good movie but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.


Image quality on the check-disc DVD-R looks fine though hardly stunning.
To be clear, ‘Shark Killer’ is probably less about sharks than you might think (despite the Sharknado reference) and is actually a fairly straight-forward action thriller. Sadly it doesn’t quite come off as intended and as a result will certainly not be the best film you’ll see this year. But to be fair, it probably won’t be the worst.