Shark Swarm

List Price: $14.95 Buy For: $12.99
Usually ships in 24 hours


Add to Cart


Compare New & Used Prices From All Available Merchants:

Starring: John Schneider
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Type: DVD
Directed By: James A. Contner
Studio: Genius Products (TVN)
Release Date: 2008-06-03
Running Time: 180 minutes
The Seventh installment in the Maneater Series, Shark Swarm is the highly anticipated miniseries now available for the first time on DVD. For decades, the Pacific waters have been a dumping ground for atomic-testing debris, bacterial pollutants, pesticides, herbicides, and nuclear waste. Some ocean species died off. Others adapted. When a group of Marine Biologists discover a beached Bull Shark, they find that it has sensory organs exhibiting violent tendencies-even after death. But the news continues to get worse. When tourists begin disappearing all over the fishing town of Full Moon Bay, a team of scientists learn that a more dangerous species, the Great White, is now loose, 40 strong, and cutting through the waters together with one horrifying purpose - to kill for pleasure. featuring Daryl Hannah (Kill Bill), Armand Asante (American Gangster), John Schneider (Millville), Shark Swarm, a jaw-snapping, bone-crushing ecological thriller miniseries about the day nature really goes wild.

Don't Waste Your Money, Or Even Your Time on This Joke (and Not in a Funny Way) of Film
This is honestly one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Even if it is on TV, don't waste your time watching it, the movie is that bad. There is absolutely nothing entertaining at all, it is very cheaply made, the acting even from some former stars such as Daryl Hannah who may have been able to act in the past just is not evident here, such as her reaction when her daughter tells her shocking news I don't want to live in this crappy town and am off to New York.

The whole plot and script is very poorly written, the sharks look terrible, there's no actual shark eating people scenes just red food colouring in the water after a shot of half a computer generated shark from the side is seen swimming towards the surface unrealistically quickly. Plus it is often the exact same footage used over and over again. There's not even any good looking actors in it, the daughter is probably the best but even she's pretty average. The actors in this are well past their prime, I mean if Daryl Hannah got roles once based on her looks, she certainly isn't going to anymore. The characters themselves are very weak loser characters. A film like this needs people you hope survive and bad guys you hope get their commeupance (eaten), but you felt more empathy for the developers and the other townsfolk than the supposed heroes. Those characters didn't seem to have any legitimate argument for blocking the development and financial relief for every other struggling to survive town resident by not selling their home.

The basic plot is a town developer wants to develop the town into a really beneficial to everyone modern looking development but one fisherman and his wife own a property in the centre of town that blocks the development from going ahead. The developer lets some waste from a plant they own go into the water to destroy the fishing industry (so the fisherman will be forced to sell) and inadvertently cause sharks to swarm into schools and develop homicidal maniac tendencies with a desire to kill everything they swim across.

There's lots of parts of the movie that just don't make any sense, such as a lifeguard stops watching the water and starts playing with some kid instead, without asking another lifeguard to watch the water because the deadbeat father asks him too (neither deadbeat parent gets eaten either I might add). Then he disappears and no one ever notices let alone starts a search. The unnecessary romantic interest sub plot for the teenage daughter comes from two surfers travelling there to surf yet there are no waves at all and yet we still have footage of them carrying boards under their arms to the practically flat water in the background. Had the director not heard of a bluescreen? I think they had to get a boat to go by to give the little ripples they had. Sharks can swim at supersonic speed in this film yet can never reach the good guys when they are in the water.

Plus, how long is this movie, a bit of editing wouldn't have gone astray, it goes for over two hours! It's like they had an idea for two movies but couldn't decide which one to make or maybe it was their first movie and they knew they'd never be given any money to make a second so wanted to get both their ideas filmed now.

This movie is terrible. I know some unrealistic plot, with psychopathic behaviour by animals they don't do in real life can be entertaining simply because it is so far fetched, such as Snakes on a Plane for example, but Shark Swarm doesn't even provide that!

One of the worst movies I have seen in my life.
I just could'nt resist the opportunity on commenting on this disaster of a movie... actually the worst I have seen in the last say... five years, and on the top five of my life. I am frankly surprised that it got some fair reviews!
I bought it for two reasons: a respectable cast that includes Darryl Hanna, Armand Assante and John Schneider and, being a shark movie fan, I have to admit that the cover was attractive.
I am so disappointed with this cast appearing in a crummy movie like this... Because man... I have seen bad movies... and this one!!
This is about some sharks somewhere that go wild and attack in bunches(swarm) because of some toxic waste thrown in the water and they attack and eat everybody without control. The shark attack scenes are actually just one (or maybe two) same take repeated over and over again. The sharks swim at a ridiculous and impossible speed and the take goes in and out so fast that it is hard to distinguish them at all. What you can notice at first glance is the computerized effect that, as I said, is repeated too many times not to be noticed. The sharks eat half of the town people... and nobody notices anything!!! Hahaha... There is a scene where a lifeguard is playing with a little girl right there in the shallow water waist high at the shore and the shark swarm (yes, the whole swarm) comes in and eat him and none of the lot of people standing right there sees anything or notice the guy is missing at all!! Not then or after! And that happens with one person or a group of people every five minutes... and nobody notices or even suspects anything is wrong!!
At the end, when it comes to the part where you want to see the bad guy
(the worst performance by Armand Assante ever) eaten, the sharks bump ONCE into the posts of a huge pier where he and all of the remaining bad guys are standing... and the pier falls off into the sea!!! Hahahaha... I only laughed harder when I watched the movie than now!! Oh... and then the sharks eat all the bad guys!!
Then, as if this was not enough, on one of the last scenes fins are seen on top of the water again near the beach... rubber fins if you look close!
And there is still something more... it goes on forever!! It lasts 164 eternal minutes during which all that happens is more and more people get eaten with the same impossible to understand fact that it goes unnoticed.
Oh yes, of course there is a plot to it... This bad guy is contaminating the water because he wants to take over the town to get rich building resorts and exploiting the people out of their homes and properties. But that is so lame and hackneyed that it is not even worth to mention.
I am not going to comment on the performances... How could they be any good with this hollow script and direction?
I got bored long before it ended... but, I have to admit, it was one of those terrible movies you watch until the end, and you don't really know why!

Let me sum it up for you
Obviously you don't expect much when you pick up a movie like this. This one will live right down to your expectations. This is a really predictable made-for-tv movie. Let me sum up all the kills for you:
1. Footage of cgi sharks swimming ridiculously fast.
2. A shot of someone swimming in the water.
3. A shot of a cgi shark swimming up really close to the camera.
4. A brief shot of some red colored water.
5. Cut away.

That's it. I don't think there's a single shot of a person and a shark together at all in this movie. Just really, really boring. Oh, and Daryl Hannah's gotten pretty nasty.

Doesn't Live Up To The Cool Box Cover
Greedy land developing schmuck, Armand Assante is buying up the properties of a small coastal fishing town called Full Moon Bay so he can put up a bunch of condos. He's got everyone in his pocket, but fisherman John Schneider just won't sell, and his property is the key to the whole project! Assante decides to play hardball by bullying Schneider with his henchmen. But most importantly, he's dumping toxins in the ocean to kill off all the fish, and in theory, ruin Schneider's business.
Oh, it kills the fish alright, but it messes with the food chain and creates a hungry swarm......A FRIGGIN' SHARK SWARM!!!! Now there's a buttload of sharks chomping down on everything they can get their fins on, including each other. Schneider and his woman, Daryl Hannah have got to turn the tide on this ravenous swarm(Ya like that "turn the tide" ocean-type pun?), and at the same time save their little town from becoming tacky.
This movie is an epic. Sort of. It's awfully damn long, longer than a movie like this should be(damn near 2 hours and 40 minutes!). But from my understanding it was a miniseries so that accounts for the ridiculous length. It's really not all that impressive. It's just interesting enough to keep you watching to the end, but that's about it. There are a bunch of pointless subplots, and good actors are used in very cookie cutter type roles, Assante and F. Murray Abraham especially(Abraham was almost downright pointless!). There are seemingly endless scenes of various people getting attacked by the sharks, at least one scene for every four that go by. This is kinda funny coz nobody seems to notice such a massive amount of people are missing! The sharks are CGI of course, making their scenes look like a shark documentary you'd see on Animal Planet or something, but with a bit more ferocity of course. It looks fake and silly, but I suppose when you're doing a movie about a swarm of hungry and aggressive sharks it's really the only route you can take. I can't imagine sharks can act too well.
But being this is a made for Sc-Fi movie, that alone will make folks determine if they want to see it. And with about eight billion direct-to-video shark films on the shelves, most folks have seen at least one or two of them before and will know what to expect considering this isn't much different. Just much longer.

More than I expected
Let me start by saying that we cannot expect much from a shark movie. I mean after Jaws.... there's not much to really do with a shark story, except add a biological alteration mixed with lots of sharks. This kind of reminded me of that Spring Break Shark Attack movie, only much better (for one thing, fins weren't overlapping in the water.... the effects were pretty cool in this one). The cast in Shark Swarm was pretty good. Had John Schneider killed a shark with an arrow with dynamite on it, that might have "jumped the shark" for this movie. Overall I was impressed with this movie. It was horror without a lot of gore (believe it or not....). If you like shark attack movies. and don't mind an almost 3 hour flick, check this one out. Another recommendation would be 12 Days of Terror. Not Jaws-quality (since all shark movies will be compared to Jaws, but this one is actually the true-life event that inspired Jaws), but worth watching at least once.

I guess the only step left for shasrk movies at this point would be a land shark, flying shark, talking shark, revised megalodon story or sharks in space. Then again, I wouldn't mind seeing something done on bull sharks, which can survive for long periods of time in fresh waters. One was caught in Missouri several years ago in the Mississippi River. I think there was a movie done about sharks in a river a few years ago.... but it sucked. There is also the USS Indianapolis movie due out next year, I think.