3-Headed Shark Attack
- Zach Butler
- Apr 26, 2017
- 7 min read
Starring: Karrueche Tran, Brad Mills, Jaason Simmons, Rob "Imitated Often. Inimidated never." Van Dam, Danny Trejo, Jena Sims
Director: Christopher Ray
Fright Level: Three-headed shark out of thirty
Favorite Line: "That's the grim truth of what pollution does."
Welcome back, Freaks! I won't lie, when I saw that Christopher Ray's 3-Headed Shark Attack was up next on the docket I squealed like a little girl. B-grade horror flicks of this nature are a guilty pleasure of mine, especially when they have legendary actors such as Danny Trejo, and WWE star, Rob Van Dam. So, without further ado, 3-Headed Shark Attack.
We open up with a group of young, horror-standard millennials having fun and sexing it up on an island beach. A scrawny guy in a tank-top decides to spice things up and bets a well-endowed girl that he passed all his physical education swim classes and he'll prove it by swimming to a buoy off in the distance. If he achieves the unimpressive task, then she has to show some skin. He wins the bet, and we are introduced to our boneless (no pun intended), aquatic killer as it proceeds to consume all the millennials in the water and on the beach. Cue the title script.
Maggie (Karrueche Tran), arrives at an underwater research lab to commence an internship. It's a horror movie, so main characters can't hold meaningful jobs, but dammit if they don't make a difference. She meets Dr. Ted Nelson (Jaason Simmons), Dr. Thomas (Jena Sims) and Dr. Thomas' massive moon glasses. Maggie learns that she won't be studying The Great Pacific Garbage Patch like she thought she would, but will be taking a look at, if you can imagine, less exciting things.
Around this time a group of Earth Pacters (read: environmentalists/college dropouts) arrive at the station wearing stained t-shirts and pants. This lets us know they're, like, totally down with the earth, man. They join the ongoing tour with Maggie, where she recognizers one of the Pacters as Greg (Brad Mills). The two used to get down with biology together in college until Greg dropped out for obviously more lucrative means as an environmentalist.
Greg and Maggie vent their past relationship during the tour, as is typical whenever seeing your former lover. We also learn that the pollution surrounding the Garbage Patch is causing mutations to the sea life. Dr. Nelson repeats this about seven more times, so the audience knows this is an environmentally conscious movie. Are you getting the hint yet?
Top-side, one of the Earth Pacters left behind to watch their gear believes he sees the shadow of a whale in the cove. We know he didn't finish in the upper percentile in college, or in common sense because he races out into the water to get a better look. At a whale. Three-headed shark removes his whale shadow disguise and eats the guy.
Dr. Nelson and Thomas (who's since removed her massive moon glasses to active her super doctor mode) along with the kids see this when they arrive top-side after noticing a large signal on their radars. They decide it's probably time to put the lab on high alert, but the shark has other plans. He starts ramming and destroying the laboratory. The gang races back underwater to raise the alert.
The decision to be underwater starts seeming like a bad idea when the lab begins to take on water, so the group makes moves to get back to the surface. They arrive at the surface just in time to see their lab explode and already I love this movie.
Greg pulls the hero card and swims out to the middle of the water to fetch the Earth Pact boat, which for some reason is the only way off the island. The island is also sinking, because science. Unfortunately, he can't start the boat because he's an idiot, and the rest of the Earth Pacters on shore catch island fever after about two minutes of waiting. They break for the boat, and one gets eaten along the way while Alison (Dawn Hamil) and her useless self make it aboard. The group on the boat then realizes that they can't drive it to shore without running it aground.
Maggie hatches the brilliant plan of distracting the shark by playing bait. But Dr. Thomas is exuding her super doctor look and says that she'll do the bait trick instead. It works, and Dr. Thomas becomes lunch.
On the boat, the group attempts to call the coast guard, who's never around when you need them. Danny Trejo and his beautiful ponytail answer (arguably better than the coast guard) instead when he picks up their distress call on his boat radio while he's out fishing with some buddies. He's Max Burns, skeptic, jokester, kind-soul, and fishing companion. After hearing that the three-headed shark is making its way towards a booze cruise full of college kids he and his fishing friends decide to help. They actually won't, but it's good to know that Danny is on the way.
Here we get some character development for the malevolent shark as we learn that it's drawn to larger concentrations of pollution, also known as drunk college kids. The shark starts knocking the cruise boat around, flinging kids off into the water and snatching them up like a party trick. There's no escape since the boat has no life vests or rafts, as is unenthusiastically explained by the ship's enervated and apparently bored captain.
Rob Van Dam makes his cinematic appearance here when he saves an attractive college girl from falling into the water. To be honest, Van Dam does a lot of the rescuing and hero work in this film, so get used to seeing those triceps that look as if a python has curled up inside them.
The gang arrives at the sinking ship and for some reason climbs aboard. There's no real plan at this point, so Ryan (Scott Reynolds), an Earth Pacter that isn't completely useless, grabs an ax. They cross paths with Van Dam who is persistent on saving the attractive college girl's fiance, who fell somewhere in the interior of the ship. The gang splits up, and Maggie and Dr. Nelson help find Howard, the long lost fiance. They spot him beneath a pile of boxes and pull him out and bring him to the top deck. Unfortunately, the shark wants everyone to see that it could have had an NBA contract if not for its enormous heart causing problems, and leaps onto the back deck where it swallows up Dr. Nelson.
Howard, the fiance, is reunited with his attractive college girl and the gang surveys the dead and dying on the upper deck. How there's so many dead from being tossed around a boat full of plastic chairs and tables is irrelevant because the gang forgoes their plan to save everyone and makes for the Earth Pacter boat along with Van Dam and the engaged couple.
Yet, Ryan decides that he isn't all that fond of living and stays back with his ax to fight the shark. By the sheer power of blind, misplaced passion he jumps off the boat and lands on the shark, which goes about as well as you would predict. Ryan rides that beast like a water skier for a moment and then gets chomped. Even Van Dam is considering that move for his next finisher.
The group escapes and heads towards an atoll Maggie saw earlier since it's the only land they can reach. Just don't look in the background at the fact that they're pretty much surrounded by land. They, along with Burns, arrive at the party location we saw in the opening shot, although at no point was Burns told where to go. But he and his fishing buddies brought guns, so there's that.
The gang's boat dies before they can reach the shore, of course, so they swim for it as Burns and his friends start shooting military grade assault rifles at the shark. The shark doesn't take kindly to this new form of fishing and eats Burns' friends. Burns then returns the favor by hacking the middle head off the shark, which is certainly one of the most bad-ass things I've ever seen in a horror movie.
As Burns checks on the now land-side gang, the shark remembers it has two more heads and a heart for the NBA and eats Burns. This continues Danny Trejo's legacy of dying in B-grade horror movies. We also learn that the shark can grow more heads.
The gang runs into a survivor from the first scene who's sole purpose is to point them towards the pontoon boats on the other side of the island. They split up on the boats, and we can already tell who's is going to survive. Allison, the useless Earth Pacter that has somehow made it to this point, drives one of the points and is promptly eaten by the 5-headed shark along with the college party survivor and the engaged couple. It is here that Maggie declares they need to kill the shark to avenge their friends.
Her plan is to lead the shark back to the Garbage Patch where it will eat itself to death in a gluttonous garbage consuming frenzy. Have I said this movie is amazing? And they do just that by tossing garbage bags off the back of the boat, at least until Van Dam loses a hand. He then flings himself from the boat to keep attracting the shark because they didn't gauge their garbage tossing very well and ran out of bags.
Greg tries to save Van Dam despite the WWE star's request not to and has to race the shark back to the boat. But then the shark heads start eating each other, and it dies. Seriously. I love a good, wholesome ending.
The Twist:
There isn't a twist in this one except the fact that they somehow found funding to make a sequel, 5-Headed Shark Attack.
Closing Thoughts:
I wanted to end the blog a little differently by giving you guys my thoughts on the film. Throughout the review, you can get the gist of how I feel, but I thought a brief review would give you a more concise view. 3-Headed Shark Attack certainly wasn't a horror movie, at least in the sense of being scary. It was fun, made absolutely no sense (which is common with B-horror films), boasted terrible CGI, and had a variety of famous actors. Once you get past these elements and just have fun with the movie, I think everyone can get on board with Christopher Ray's environmentally charged horror flick. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm looking forward to the next in the series.
Thanks again for reading, Freaks! As always, be sure to follow me on twitter at @netflixhorror and subscribe to the Netflix Horror Blog Facebook page. See you next week right back here for another horrific review!
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