Jaws is the mother of all movies (in Quentin Tarantino’s opinion). Although about 30 “shark” films were released before it, and one even became a masterpiece – Blue Water, White Death (1975), Jaws seemed to establish the idea. Some others have been done in this year including The Reef: Stalked which was nice; Maneater is coming up next from Justin Lee who is a writer/director. Unfortunately, like many other films it belongs to this trap, not understanding why Jaws was so successful.
In fact Jaws might not even be considered as a shark movie at all: over the entire film Spielberg’s predatory fish made an appearance of less than four minutes on screen and even when it did it looked more like some puppetry machine. It was rather thrilling direction, simple music and great passionate characters that knit into a compact script, but not the case with shark that makes Jaws outstanding. As a result, Maneater looses sight of this and ends up making an empty film. Nevertheless, it comes almost to ‘so bad it’s good’, beginning from pure nonsense in some scenes to lousy CGI sharks and ending with comic gaffes in directing choices. Well maybe Maneater isn’t such an excellent movie as the fun drinking game though.
The opening sequence in Maneater demonstrates how absolutely stupid this movie really is. A scuba diver can be seen first diving into some deep caverns before having CGI teeth chomping around him/her; then title appears quietly out of black waters while muffled screams are heard underneath. And suddenly there is another rough cut taking us through sunny island hops accompanied by poppy summer tunes playing dreamily in background. At once everything turns into commercials for a cruise company that looks more like Sex on the Beach instead blood in water.
Maneater does this quite often indeed. Smashing cuts occur after various other shark attacks that take place in the film and always bring them back to some sunny mood. The accompanying music in the movie often shifts abruptly into something playful and jaunty as it listens to shots of bikini-clad bodies, like it is undergoing regular bursts of major serotonin. In other words, Maneater is tonally disjointed and strange but again, almost hilarious.
The characters are very distinct from each other because they have different names; two even have more than one syllable. However, Jessie (played by Nicky Whelan) has a little bit additional personal history: she has recently broken up with her boyfriend so now her swimwear is black while she herself smiles less frequently. Her “friends” have ‘forced her’ to go on a beautiful tropical vacation that ends up at what passes for an uninhabited island these days, navigated across clear water bodies. Maybe everyone does pretty well here (especially sarcastic-snarky Shane West), but ultimately they’re shark bait.
Meanwhile, an islander is grieving the demise of his daughter at the hands (fins?) of a big white shark. Enter Harlan, a very southern character who resides in this pacific paradise for whatever reason and played by Trace Adkins, a country music singer, Celebrity Apprentice contestant and author of such hits as Honky Tonk Badonkadonk. This man takes to the water to seek revenge, putting ammunition belts on his chest and adorning cowboy hat with shark’s teeth affixed to its edge. It’s all done straight-faced but it is ridiculous; hopefully that was the intention behind it. Harlan’s path ties in with Jessie’s one through blood relationship and CGI (although sometimes the shark looks mechanical; it is hard to say).
The plot doesn’t have much more than this — middle-aged sorority-like people partying on an island, high-speed boating country music star seeking retribution against a great white fish called sharks nicknamed Jaws as well as occasional CGI shots of what appears like a flopping great white eating up people.
Jeff Fahey pops up as Professor Hoffman for about six minutes; he plays a role that allows Maneater “audit” a college class by giving dubious statements like: “The species of the great white has evaded scientists for years.” In actuality, they’re studied frequently.
But then again no one seems particularly interested in making high art or suspenseful masterpiece here. Unlike serious taut good films with sharks like The Shallows or Open Water, Maneater seems self-aware enough to understand how stupid it is and embrace that fact. It feels like something SyFy made-for-TV movie could produce (of course there are no tornadoes attached to these same sharks). In this film someone says “What are we chopped liver?”, not cracking a smile at all; even quoting jaws when it mentions “we’re gonna need bigger boat”.
In this movie, poorly rendered CGIs are shot point blank in the head — it’s absurd and hopefully self-conscious. It is not gripping or scary enough to be taken seriously as it does not distract from its own ridiculousness, making it even more fun to watch with a few friends for laughs. To me, Maneater seems like one of those films that a group of friends would drink to and do Mystery Science Theater impersonations while laughing through awkward scenes and over-the-top moments. Hopefully, the filmmakers were also having a good time.
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