Hot Spring Shark Attack takes B-movie horror humor to stratospheric levels of schlock absurdity. What begins as ridiculous and goofy gets exponentially sillier as writer/director Morihito Inoue raises his game in a relentless plot. The premise of ancient sharks with supernatural abilities attacking a Japanese coastal town elicits a few chuckles, but then the brainless onslaught wears thin. And that’s just in the first half hour of a movie that clocks in at a meager seventy-two minutes — without credits. Hot Spring Shark Attack is an experience solely meant for dedicated genre fans and those who want a complete break from reality.
Hotspring Sharkattack
1.5
/5
- Release Date
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July 5, 2024
- Runtime
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70 minutes
- Director
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Morihito Inoue
- Writers
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Morihito Inoue
-
Daniel Aguilar
Professor Morelli
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Shoichiro Akaboshi
Tetsuzaemon Mangan
Set in a seaside resort town on Japan’s Atsumi Peninsula, the dorsal fin hijinks begin with a young couple hanging out on a boat. The bikini-clad woman splashes in the water as a shark approaches. She’s quickly dragged under the water, screaming, but her boyfriend reacts in a completely unexpected way. He laughs with satisfaction before calling the coast guard as an afterthought. Comeuppance is swift as his girlfriend climbs out of the water and kicks him squarely in the head. She’s followed by her savior, the absolutely shredded Macho (Koichi Makigami), resplendent in a crotch-hugging Speedo, who victoriously chucks a rubber shark on deck.
No Bite to CGI & Rubber Sharks
Hot Spring Shark Attack makes it clear in its first minute that there’s nothing remotely serious going on here. Director Morihito then introduces the Chief of Police, Denbei Tsuka (Kiyobumi Kaneko), who shoots words into targets with a pistol that looks and sounds like a cap gun. The Chief wants to retire and become a novelist, but he’s got three people missing after visiting the city’s famed hot springs. He gets an earful from wannabe influencer — and town mayor — Kanichi Mangan (Takuya Fujimura), who warns the top cop that he can’t ruin tourism with shark warnings and stop the construction of a 200 billion-yen hotel being built by a 3D printer.
The bloodbath flows in earnest when pieces of another hot-spring bather are found with a giant tooth embedded in his mauled body. Dr. Mayumi Kose (Yuu Nakanishi), a marine biologist, believes that a prehistoric shark — drum roll, please — with the ability to squish itself through pipes is responsible for the deaths. More influencers descend on Atsumi to document the attacks, but become victims themselves as the sharks strike with impunity while bumbling local authorities struggle to respond.
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Morihito goes purposely overboard in his feature debut, mocking both Jaws and Japanese kaiju movies with truly over-the-top iterations of classic characters. The Police Chief, Mayor, Biologist and even the Atsumi setting — similar in name to Jaws’ fictional Amity Island — are wild caricatures that are meant to be humorous. Morihito, to his credit, does get a few laughs from the protagonists’ stylized introductions, but what happens next in Hot Spring Shark Attack is beyond bonkers, and also a little tiresome. Let’s just say the sharks don’t stay in the pipes and tubs for long.
The film’s wacky production design and visual effects are instrumental to Morihito’s vision. The amateurish CGI shark attacks are interchanged with obvious, tiny models and cheap practical effects. One scene has an influencer gobbled up like a bad video game. Then the next victim is literally holding a rubber shark in his hands while what looks like red tomato sauce is splashed on the wall in buckets. Is that supposed to be funny? Some may laugh at fake blood and puppets, but the sober and discerning won’t be amused.
An Influencer Buffet
Hot Spring Shark Attack relies on a shifting score to aid the shenanigans, as composer Yuzuru Jinma incorporates everything from orchestral to disco as the sharks’ feeding frenzy commences in earnest. This lack of a consistent musical theme actually helps the disparate effects and scattershot edits — the dance grooves are jumping as mannequin limbs are lobbed at the camera. But there’s never a point where the filmmakers want the audience invested in any of the characters. This is the film’s biggest flaw, and a lost opportunity to be more engaging without sight and sound gags.
The primary characters vanish from the narrative for long stretches and inexplicably pop up again out of nowhere. You honestly don’t know who to follow as the lead. The Chief does a disappearing act and is replaced by the Biologist, Mayor, and muscular Macho, who literally punches every CGI shark he encounters. He also never speaks. Macho just appears out of the blue when a shark needs its butt kicked. You’d think a guy that badass and formidable would have a memorable catchphrase, but apparently pummeling fake sharks in silence is good enough.
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Hot Spring Shark Attack has a climax that makes everything you’ve previously seen seem tame in comparison. It’s a rough slog getting there, but it’s worth the wait for the patient. Morihito deserves a golf clap for sticking to his guns, delivering puerile glory in an ending that actually nudges the film’s one-star rating higher by the sheer magnitude of its cinematic silliness. “Wow” is an understatement.
Hot Springs Shark Attack (originally titled Onsen shâku) has Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. A Plan A production, it will have a concurrent theatrical and VOD release from Utopia on July 11th.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
