“Jaws? More Like Gums.”
There are bad shark movies, and then there’s Attack of the Jurassic Shark—a film so catastrophically cheap, it makes Sharknado look like Lawrence of Arabia. This 2012 Canadian “adventure horror-thriller” (all words used under duress) is what happens when you combine the plot of Jaws, the budget of a garage sale, and the acting skills of a particularly self-conscious sandwich.
Directed by Brett Kelly, Jurassic Shark attempts to parody Jaws and Jurassic Park simultaneously, but in doing so, it manages to insult both—and possibly the concept of cinema itself. It’s 75 minutes of prehistoric pain, filled with plastic blood, low-rent villains, and a CGI shark that appears to have been rendered on a Nintendo 64 by someone using oven mitts.
The Plot (If You Can Call It That)
The story begins when an oil rig drills too deep into the lake floor (yes, a lake), accidentally unleashing a prehistoric megalodon that’s apparently been chilling there since the Cretaceous period, waiting for a film crew to ruin its peace. The rig explodes, because of course it does, and the shark immediately starts eating anyone within swimming distance of a plot point.
Enter two girls who serve as the opening chum sacrifice, eaten within the first five minutes. It’s the movie’s way of saying: “Abandon hope, all ye who press play.”
Then, as if guided by a random generator, we get two groups of idiots:
-
A gang of art thieves, who have stolen a priceless painting but accidentally drop it into the water (because they’re professionals).
-
A group of college students, led by Jill (Emanuelle Carriere), who wants to study pollution or something—though honestly, she should’ve been writing her essay on “The Death of Quality Control in Cinema.”
These two groups collide on a tiny island, where they spend the rest of the movie being eaten, arguing, and tripping over continuity errors. It’s like Survivor: Dollar Store Edition—except instead of immunity idols, they have dynamite.
The Shark: Apex Predator or Angry GIF?
The “Jurassic Shark” itself is the real star of the show, if only because you can’t believe how bad it looks. Imagine the world’s worst screensaver, now imagine it attacking a canoe. The CGI shark floats stiffly across the screen like it’s auditioning for Finding Nemo: Satanic Edition.
When it eats someone, there’s no splash, no physics, no logic—just a cut to a red cloud in the water, like someone spilled Kool-Aid. Sometimes the actors pretend to struggle, other times they just stand there until the editor decides they’ve been “bitten.”
It’s the only horror movie where the shark has less emotional range than the people it devours.
The Acting: Community Theater Meets Tax Write-Off
Let’s talk about the cast, because they deserve… not praise, but perhaps a group hug.
Emanuelle Carriere plays Jill, our plucky protagonist, with all the conviction of someone forced to recite lines under threat of losing their parking spot. Her performance is less “final girl” and more “mildly inconvenienced by prehistoric tragedy.”
Christine Emes, as Tia, manages to emote occasionally—though mostly she just yells “JILL!” like she’s in a perpetual toothpaste commercial.
Angela Parent, playing the evil art thief Barb, deserves special mention for chewing the scenery harder than the shark chews people. She delivers her lines with soap-opera intensity, as if she wandered in from a Days of Our Lives set and just decided to commit to whatever this was.
The rest of the cast look like they were picked up from the nearest Tim Hortons and told there’d be free donuts.
The Dialogue: Now with 30% More Stupid
The script sounds like it was written by a malfunctioning voice-to-text app. Characters explain everything out loud, often repeating it for the audience’s benefit—because clearly the filmmakers didn’t trust us to keep up with the advanced plot about a big fish in a lake.
Example:
Jill: “It’s a prehistoric shark!”
Tia: “You mean… like, from the past?”
Thank you, Tia. Without you, we’d be lost in a sea of confusion.
Another gem comes from Dr. Lincoln Grant (Jurgen Vollrath), the lone oil rig survivor, who solemnly intones, “We drilled too deep.” You can practically hear the movie’s budget echoing in his voice.
The Special Effects: More “Special” Than “Effects”
Every kill scene is a masterclass in how not to do practical or digital effects. Blood looks like red-tinted dish soap. The dynamite explosions are clearly just stock footage. One moment features a shark attack that cuts between a close-up of a screaming actor and a JPEG of the shark so pixelated it could qualify as modern art.
The editing is so choppy that it feels like the shark isn’t just attacking the characters—it’s attacking the timeline. At one point, a character dies, reappears in the background of another scene, and then dies again. Resurrection is apparently just part of the ecosystem.
The Soundtrack: Public Domain Panic
The film’s music sounds like it was lifted from a 1990s video game about submarine maintenance. You get generic “tense” strings when the shark’s nearby, “jazzy” synths for no reason at all, and what might be an accordion solo during a chase scene.
At some points, the sound effects simply give up. The shark attacks, there’s silence, and then someone screams half a second late, as if remembering their cue.
The Pacing: Somehow Both Rushed and Endless
The movie is only 75 minutes long, but it feels like an eternity trapped in open water with no rescue in sight. Scenes drag on forever—characters walking, sitting, or staring meaningfully at the lake—until suddenly the shark attacks and you realize you’ve forgotten why you were watching in the first place.
Even the climactic showdown is a dud. Jill blows up the shark with dynamite (of course), but the explosion happens entirely off-screen, presumably because the filmmakers couldn’t afford the fireworks permit.
And just when you think it’s over, the movie tosses in one last “twist”: another megalodon appears and eats two fishermen, setting up a sequel that absolutely no one asked for.
The Sequel(s): Proof That God Has Abandoned Us
Not only did this movie get a sequel—it got two.
Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse (2021) and Jurassic Shark 3: Seavenge (2023) prove that audiences will watch anythingif it has a shark and a number in the title.
It’s cinematic evolution in reverse—a prehistoric creature inspiring prehistoric filmmaking.
Final Thoughts: When Dinosaurs Attack Your Brain Cells
Attack of the Jurassic Shark is so incompetently made that it accidentally becomes a comedy. It’s the kind of movie that makes you question not just the state of modern cinema, but your own survival instincts.
It’s full of unintentionally hilarious moments—like when characters run away from danger at a brisk walking pace, or when the shark’s fin clearly clips through the shoreline like a bad video game glitch.
Watching it is like being bitten by stupidity itself: you’re laughing one minute, screaming the next, and eventually you just go numb.
Final Rating: 1 out of 5 Fossilized Brain Cells
A cinematic disaster 65 million years in the making—and it shows.
If you’re looking for a realistic shark thriller, watch Jaws. If you want to laugh until you question your will to live, watch Jurassic Shark.
It’s not so much a movie as it is a cautionary tale about what happens when you give Final Cut Pro to a caveman.
At least the shark had the good sense to die at the end. We should all be so lucky.
