"Ghost Shark" at least has a unique premise. In this film, the shark can go anywhere as long as water is present. Of course, you have the standard beach attack scenes. The shark also attacks people on a slip and slide, car wash, swimming pool and most impressively when someone drinks a glass of water.
The film has an impressive amount of gore for a television film. The sequence where it attacks the man drinking a glass of water is especially impressive. The puppet comes apart lengthwise while the specter slowly moves out from the bottom. Other people meet bloody ends ever 10 minutes or so. These moments pepper what is otherwise a standard creature feature.
My issue with Ghost Shark is its lack of ambition. Here is a film with an interesting albeit gimmicky idea that doesn't bother to build a backstory beyond, "the cave where the shark died is cursed and anyone meeting a violent death there is resurrected." The teenage heroes run across an older drunk whose wife was apparently killed there by him in a domestic altercation? What happened to her? If the shark became a ghost, did his wife or is she a zombie? I ask these questions because I became bored and frustrated by the film's lack of exploration of its premise. I get the feeling this idea was discussed with corporate executives who approved the idea with tight control of the script. What plot we do get is a standard ripoff of the original Jaws down to the governmental official who doesn't believe the main characters.
The biggest question I have is, "How does the ghost shark physically eat people," since it is a ghost? The film never addresses this question. Apparently, its ghost powers allow it to pass through some solid non-human objects until it gets to a person which it can eat. I think the idea could easily have been worked around if instead of being a ghost the shark were a zombie shark. The film doesn't even make good use of the shark's ghost powers. While we see it pass through some solid objects, where is the sequence of the shark passing through walls in the museum to stalk victims.
Ghost Shark is not shot or edited well. In one sequence a character is supposed to be swimming to shore. The next cut shows him swimming away from shore. Multiple cuts contain dialog or other sound from a previous cut or from a character who isn't on screen. More evidence of corporate carelessness. If you must watch Ghost Shark, wait until you're out of options for your shark marathon.
The film has an impressive amount of gore for a television film. The sequence where it attacks the man drinking a glass of water is especially impressive. The puppet comes apart lengthwise while the specter slowly moves out from the bottom. Other people meet bloody ends ever 10 minutes or so. These moments pepper what is otherwise a standard creature feature.
My issue with Ghost Shark is its lack of ambition. Here is a film with an interesting albeit gimmicky idea that doesn't bother to build a backstory beyond, "the cave where the shark died is cursed and anyone meeting a violent death there is resurrected." The teenage heroes run across an older drunk whose wife was apparently killed there by him in a domestic altercation? What happened to her? If the shark became a ghost, did his wife or is she a zombie? I ask these questions because I became bored and frustrated by the film's lack of exploration of its premise. I get the feeling this idea was discussed with corporate executives who approved the idea with tight control of the script. What plot we do get is a standard ripoff of the original Jaws down to the governmental official who doesn't believe the main characters.
The biggest question I have is, "How does the ghost shark physically eat people," since it is a ghost? The film never addresses this question. Apparently, its ghost powers allow it to pass through some solid non-human objects until it gets to a person which it can eat. I think the idea could easily have been worked around if instead of being a ghost the shark were a zombie shark. The film doesn't even make good use of the shark's ghost powers. While we see it pass through some solid objects, where is the sequence of the shark passing through walls in the museum to stalk victims.
Ghost Shark is not shot or edited well. In one sequence a character is supposed to be swimming to shore. The next cut shows him swimming away from shore. Multiple cuts contain dialog or other sound from a previous cut or from a character who isn't on screen. More evidence of corporate carelessness. If you must watch Ghost Shark, wait until you're out of options for your shark marathon.