Big Shark is the movie equivalent of a drunk text that somehow cost actual money to make. It is cinema in the same way instant noodles are “cuisine”: technically, yes, but you probably shouldn’t inspect it too closely if you value your sanity.
Written, directed, produced by, and starring Tommy Wiseau, Big Shark answers a question absolutely nobody asked: “What if The Room had a 35-foot shark and three very confused firefighters?” The result is a fever dream stitched together with stock sound effects, continuity errors, and dialogue that feels like it was translated back and forth between four languages and a concussion.
Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Thought in Sight
The plot, such as it is, follows three New Orleans firefighters: Patrick (Tommy Wiseau), Tim (Isaiah LaBorde), and Georgie (Mark Valeriano), who live and work together like a chaotic Airbnb listing with helmets. They kick things off by saving two children from a fire and being hailed as heroes of the city, which is hilarious because after that first scene they mostly just wander around, drink, argue, and periodically remember there’s supposed to be a shark somewhere.
On a fishing trip with his girlfriend Sophia, Patrick claims to see a 35-foot shark. It’s unclear whether this is supposed to be terrifying or just Tuesday, because the movie treats it with the energy of someone noticing a weird cloud. When he tries to warn his friends, they dismiss him and insist there are no sharks in the Mississippi River—a line repeatedly delivered like it’s a major scientific revelation and not a thing literally any child in America could tell you.
Eventually, the news announces shark attacks, vindicating Patrick and proving that yes, even basic geography is no match for Tommy Wiseau’s willpower. The shark is apparently “carried by flood water through the streets of the city,” chomping random pedestrians as it goes, which we mostly experience through jarringly edited scenes where people scream, the camera shakes, and a CGI asset straight out of a 2005 screensaver lunges at the audience.
The Shark Is Big. The Logic Is Not.
The shark itself is less a character and more a recurring special effect that keeps trying—and failing—to be scary. It appears at wildly inconsistent sizes, like someone kept scaling it in the editing software to see what “felt right” and then forgot to standardize anything.
One moment it’s huge and towering; the next, it looks about as big as a bus and roughly as threatening as a wet sock. It moves through water, flood streets, and apparently narrative space-time with equal ease. The movie calls it “Big Shark” like that’s a concept we’ve never encountered in hundreds of other films, many of which remembered to have tension.
Instead of building dread, the film uses the shark like a jump scare pop-up ad: intrusive, poorly rendered, and unwelcome.
Firefighters, Feelings, and Filler
You might expect a killer shark movie to, you know, focus on shark-related things. But Big Shark spends an astonishing amount of time on bar scenes, relationship drama, pool games, and awkward banter that sounds like it was ad-libbed by people who only met five minutes earlier.
We get:
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Patrick and Tim bickering in a bar.
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Patrick and Tim socializing in a bar.
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Patrick and Tim standing in a bar talking about not believing Patrick.
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An old man in the bar handing Tim a treasure map that marks where the shark sleeps.
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You, wishing the bar would get eaten instead.
Their girlfriends, Sophia and Charlotte, drift in and out of the story like NPCs with three dialogue lines each: “Patrick, are you okay?”, “Tim, you’re acting weird,” and “Let’s go dancing.” Every time the shark disappears from the screen, the movie collapses into these repetitive scenes, as if terrified we might notice there isn’t enough plot for a feature runtime.
Captain Joe and the Art of Saying Things
Their boss, Captain Joe, appears to provide them with scuba gear and urgent gravitas. He implores them to “help save the city,” which would land better if the overall tone didn’t scream “shot in one afternoon in a warehouse with borrowed props.”
He hands them equipment like he’s giving kids Halloween costumes and sends them to battle a giant murder fish with the same casualness you’d use to ask someone to pick up groceries. There’s no sense of official response, disaster management, or even the vaguest citywide panic. It’s just, “Here is some scuba, go fight the shark, thanks.”
The Treasure Map, Because Why Not
One of the movie’s most gloriously pointless additions is the treasure map. An old man at the bar gives Tim a crude map showing where the shark “sleeps.” This raises many questions, including:
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Why does the shark have a designated sleeping spot like a pet cat?
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How does the old man know this? Is he the shark’s landlord?
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Why is the map drawn like a children’s pirate game?
Patrick, to his credit, briefly expresses confusion over whether sharks even sleep, which is about as close as this movie ever gets to engaging with reality.
The Pig Carcass Plan: Sharknado Wishes
The grand plan to kill Big Shark is peak brain-melt brilliance: Patrick and Tim will place a tracking device on the shark, follow it in scuba gear, and then feed it dynamite hidden inside a pig carcass.
This is pitched in a pool hall over a game of billiards, as if it’s no more unusual than deciding which bar to hit next. They talk about it like: “Step one, track shark. Step two, pig bomb. Step three, profit.”
And the wild thing is…the plan actually works.
They spear the shark with the tracker, go after it, and lure it into eating the booby-trapped pig. The shark explodes in a hilariously anticlimactic burst of CGI. Tim appears to die in the blast, but thankfully—or tragically, depending on how you’re feeling—he was just flung into the air and survives.
This film’s relationship with physics is like its relationship with dialogue: strained and mostly imaginary.
Georgie’s Death and the Song No One Asked For
Georgie doesn’t make it to the final showdown. The shark eats him in one of the movie’s attempts at seriousness. In response, Patrick and Tim visit a shrine erected on the beach in his honor, where they mourn him by composing a song.
Right there. On the spot.
Two grown men, in the aftermath of their friend being devoured by a gigantic shark, strumming the air and making up lyrics as if they’re auditioning for the world’s saddest talent show. It is meant to be touching. It is not. It feels like accidental parody, the cinematic equivalent of someone putting a novelty ringtone over a funeral speech.
Dancing in the Streets of New Orleans (Somehow Not the Worst Part)
After the shark dies, the movie decides it has earned joy. Tim survives, the city is saved, and the heroes celebrate by dancing in the streets of New Orleans alongside a marching band.
And honestly? This might be the most honest moment in the film. At least it knows it’s ridiculous.
You survived being thrown into the sky by a dynamite-fed CGI shark? Sure, go dance. You’ve been trapped in a Tommy Wiseau narrative for 115 minutes. You deserve it.
Final Verdict: Not So Much “Big Shark” as “Deep Regret”
Big Shark is less a horror-adventure film and more an endurance test wrapped in rubbery CGI and awkward line readings. It’s the kind of movie that’s almost critic-proof—not because it’s secretly brilliant, but because its mere existence feels like a dare.
Is it good? Absolutely not.
Is it coherent? Rarely.
Will it become a cult watch for people who enjoy cinematic disasters with their friends and a lot of alcohol? Oh, absolutely.
If you go in expecting an actual shark movie, you’ll be disappointed. But if you go in expecting The Room: Aquatic Edition—a chaotic, laughable mess that’s bizarrely confident in its own nonsense—you might just have a terrible, wonderful time.
Big Shark doesn’t just jump the shark. It straps dynamite to it, forgets the logic, and then dances in the street while the credits roll.
