Shark Girl – Review

Directors: Justin Shilton & Rob Zazzali

Release date:2024

Contains spoilers

I had been approached to consider Shark Girl for review, with co-director Rob Zazzali suggesting “while not a straight-up vampire movie, it definitely has consistent vampire vibes.” But I was concerned, not because it was the directors’ first feature but because I was still haunted by memories of Sharkula. Well, first off, as far as I am concerned this can be classed as a vampire film. However, more importantly, I was not only pleasantly surprised, but I was also rather impressed.

Ryan Bertroche as Ron

The film starts with an emergency at the SoCal nuclear reactor. With limited funds the filmmakers managed to give a fair sense of the emergency visually as well as in audio. A reactor fire, they vent coolant into the sea. A shark is caught in the ejected effluent – the shark isn’t brilliantly rendered but is on for a brief moment and not repeated and gives us enough but not so much it detracts. I will say at this point that I was also taken by very competent photography and it was the professional photography through that impressed me - too often it as a failure point in budget films.

looking for likes

Heidi (Alexandra Corin Johnston) is an influencer. Now it is interesting to me that influencer culture is being used so much in horror films generally and within vampire films specifically. It is not a shock, obviously the films are reflecting times, and I do look at influencer culture along with the vampire as capitalist and zombie as consumer in my contribution to the forthcoming Toxic Nostalgia on Screen. What was interesting to me, therefore, was the portrayal of Heidi, at this point, as pleasant and exploited – this is not the normal portrayal of an influencer.

Alexandra Corin Johnston as Heidi

For instance, she sees a flyer about a missing dog and wants to take time to share it with her followers. Her boyfriend and photographer Ron (Ryan Bertroche) has no such sympathies. They head to the beach for more shots, and he wants her in the water (to capture a wet hair flip). She does not want to go in but he bullies her in and again to make her go further out. He is distracted with his camera when something grabs Heidi and pulls her under – sensibly the filmmakers showed nothing here and leave it to the imagination of the viewer – when he can’t see her, he gets the hump and leaves – dropping a terse voicemail. He assumes she has left and has no real concern for her.

beach attack

A couple are on the beach at night, she’s a little freaked as it is so dark. After a while he notices something and realises it is a body. He goes over and it is Heidi, alive but unconscious. They have no signal, so he sends his girlfriend to get help. Heidi comes round, grabs the young man and bites his neck. When the woman comes back she attacks her also. Now we see her teeth have become sharp and shark-like, but that is the only transformation aspect used. We also only see her bite and feed like a vampire – there is dialogue about victims ripped apart and body parts strewn, this is all off screen but this decision works. With knowledge of the shark aspect we accept the unseen frenzy, with the aesthetic we accept the vampire feeding.

Sumayyah Ameerah as Sienna

So, as the film progresses we see Heidi transform more in personality than physically – she becomes more predatory, unwilling to be the victim to Ron, other influencers, agents or temperamental designers. This develops further where she becomes alien to the world, indifferent, even cruel. The word alien is useful as there is a thread that borrows from Species (1995). Also involved are Christopher (Nick Tag) a wannabe reporter who went to her high school and her best friend Sienna (Sumayyah Ameerah), a marine biologist. The film's narrative is underpinned with conspiracy theory, mostly around industrial conspiracy. 

shark teeth

There isn’t a lot of lore – she is a mutation and we can say created by science, or at least the detritus science leaves behind. Pressing her head in the right place makes her paralyse for a short moment (equivalent to striking a shark on the nose and disrupting the electrical sense). She is not the only one to have been mutated and there is a serum that can be personalised to revert the mutation, we also realise that a bite can turn another. There was nearly a staking moment – a harpoon is used – but it did not strike the heart.

Nick Tag as Christopher

What I liked about this, first and foremost, was the very competent photography. The acting was good and whilst the story was a tad on the silly side the filmmakers knew what they were doing with it. I liked the idea that Christopher’s suspicions get raised as wound bite diameters were too small for a shark large enough to do the damage found – the fact that it doesn’t seem that the authorities work that out isn’t overly commented on. Heidi leaves a trail, which is too close to her for getting away with her activities, but the timeframe is small enough that the fact we only see her friends tracking her does work. I also like the choice the filmmakers made to not have bad practical or CGI effects and work on a less is more basis. Is it the greatest film, nope, but it is a film called Shark Girl for heaven’s sake. However, it looks good, has a decent characterisation in Heidi and entertained. 6 out of 10 surprised me but is absolutely fair.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US