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 is 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

Interesting Short: Fashion Model

From renowned Manga horror artist/storyteller Junji Ito comes this short, first published in 1992 and found, translated, in the collection entitled Shiver. I must admit it is early days in my exploration of his work but what I have read and seen I utterly adore.

This particular story might have been presented to you as a “Use of Tropes” blog and it is true that the artist has not suggested that central character Miss Fuchi is a vampire and describes her as a “shark woman” (or at least carrying an element thereof). Nevertheless, there are aspects of the vampire here, enough for me to class it as such and a further aspect comes into another story featuring Miss Fuchi, which I’ll look at separately.

The story starts with Iwasaki having a premonition that something bad is going to happen. He goes to a café and is flicking through a magazine when he spots a model within the pages (Miss Fuchi, though he does not know this). In contrast to the pretty, young starlets otherwise featured, the model has a singular look (one might say almost Addamsesque). Her image disturbs him so much that she invades his dreams and he is so pre-occupied he almost fails to write the screenplay that he and his student filmmaking buddies need.

read right to left

As it is, he manages to start to forget her image, writes the script and the film wins a competition. With that success they are going to make a second film and decide to audition non-school actresses. Iwasaki’s sense of dread returns and, after identifying Tamae Mori as their likely lead, they open another application and it is from Miss Fuchi. Despite Iwasaki’s sense of dread the others decide to hire her as well as Tamae Mori because she is a professional model and so might raise the film’s profile.

They meet their stars, Miss Fuchi is hugely tall, monstrous in feature and, given the sense of dread that accompanies her (for Iwasaki, at least), I think we could describe her as unhomely, in a Freudian sense. Her career seems anomalous (and Junji Ito was clearly commenting on a monstrousness at the heart of the fashion industry, made manifest). As they drive to location she laughs, revealing a maw of wicked looking fangs. When the crew concentrates on the pretty lead, she deals with her in a particularly cannibalistic way (assuming she is human).

It is that flesh and blood diet and her teeth that made me push this into the vampire realm – though her singular looks (and the uneasiness they engender) are also quite vampiric. The Shiver collection has a further bonus story featuring Miss Fuchi becoming jealous of a new, pretty model at her agency and eating her. This is entitled Fashion Model: Cursed Frame and was previously unreleased, dating it to the year of the collection, which was 2015. My thanks to Ian who got me the Shiver collection.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK

Sharkula – review

Director: Mark Polonia

Release Date: 2022

Contains spoilers

One half of the Polonia brothers, you have to give Mark Polonia props for cranking out low budget film after low budget film since the 80s. Not that those I’ve seen are very good but grit, determination and perseverance are all there.

As you’ll guess, with this one we’ve strayed into the realm of a vampire shark. We’re also in a particularly poorly shot realm that had no effects budget – all things that will be discussed later.

blood spurt

The film starts with a cgi shark and then we see Dracula (Jeff Kirkendall, Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter, The Temptress, 3 to Murder & Bloodlust) being chased by an angry mob. He is cornered on a cliff. One of the villagers stabs him and we get an awful cgi spurt of blood… now post-production blood can look bad at the best of time, but this looked awfully cartoonish. Dracula falls from the cliff and into the maw of said shark.

fire dancer

We get alliance talk, a suggestion that a dark power wanted Dracula to survive – and later in the film we hear that Dracula turned the shark but became the servant of the shark (don’t get how that happens but… let’s just go with it). We get some scenes (that are interspersed throughout) of a fire dancer. Her reason for being there? Possibly supplicant to the shark but the quality of the filming compared to the main filming (along with them being night shots rather than the ‘day for night’ the film relies on) suggests it might be stock footage the filmmakers thought cool. The credits had a surf music theme with the repeated lyric ‘Sharkula’ that was fun.

Arthur and John

In the modern day and we see John (James Kelly) and Arthur (Tim Hatch, also 3 to Murder, The Temptress and Shadow Track: Vampire Hunter) walking into Arkham, a small seaside town. They have been offered jobs with room and board by Vladimir Constantine (aka Dracula), which they will use to pay for college (clearly mature students). Now let’s talk photography. Just before this we got an establishing shot of a bustling port town, the photography crisp, the camera movement smooth and, I assume, stock footage. The principal camera work is jerky, the resolution poor and plagued with motion blur. It’s awful.

Kyle Rappaport as Renfield

So, they get to the motel (the Bucket o' Chum) and meet Renfield (Kyle Rappaport). They discover they have to share a room and the town, by order of Constantine, has an 8PM curfew. Their jobs are shifting crates shipped in during curfew. Obviously, things start to go wrong – John, especially, is overly curious. He has also spotted Mina (Jamie Morgan) who works in the historical society and is the object of Renfield’s perverted lust and Dracula’s twisted love. We get women chained in the cellar (one sacrificed to the shark and one turned), with Dracula’s coffin down there. Dracula seems less than pleased with the power structure with the shark.

Dracula and the shark

I mentioned the effects, especially the cgi. The practical zombie/revenant masks for the two servants of Dracula looked pretty good, all things considered. We get a tremendously crap bat (why Dracula didn’t transform on the cliff, at the head of the film, is probably overthinking it) and the shark is mostly a drawn (it appears) bat winged monstrosity and also a pair of glowing red eyes in the water (right next to each other rather than the laterally positioned eyes a shark would more likely have) and a (probably partial) rubber head for attack scenes.

Jamie Morgan as Mina

The acting is generally over the top, especially from Kirkendall and Rappaport, and I suspect they had a real laugh with their performances. However nothing will set the world alight performance wise and some is less than great (though the dialogue is somewhat stilted to stagy also). This was never going to be a great film – it’s a no-budget vampire shark movie – but that apparent absolute lack of budget and the extremely poor photography and cinematography conspire to take this out of “so bad it's good” to “just plain bad”. 2 out of 10 is probably bolstered by how fun the “Sharkula” theme song was.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

American Horror Story – Double Feature – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2021

Contains spoilers

When I reviewed the fifth season of American Horror Story, I had to admit that I was not a regular viewer of the series, which to that point had been a different story per season. That trend continued after season 5, I was just not drawn to the series itself.

However, with season 10 (known a Double Feature) I was drawn back as it contained vampires (of a sort). In fact, this season booked the trend and rather than having 1 story it had 2; episodes 1-6 being entitled Red Tide and episodes 7-10 entitled Death Valley. The latter was an alien-based story, using all the conspiracy tropes around Roswell/Area 51 and split between black and white sections in the past and colour sections in the present. I have to say I rather enjoyed it.

a pale person

Red Tide is our vampire episode however. It follows Harry (Finn Wittrock, Halloweentown High (Scroll down)), a struggling screenwriter, who is moving his family – heavily pregnant wife Doris (Lily Rabe) and young daughter Alma (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) – to Provincetown, Massachusetts. The trip, set for 3-months through winter, is designed to allow Harry space and quietude to write but also Doris is contracted to interior decorate the house they are staying in. Having found roadkill on the road into town, which looks like it has been attacked, they quickly notice strange men hanging round the streets.

Finn Wittrock as Harry

Known as Pale people, they seem to be bald, inarticulate and “twitchy”. They all wear long coats and there is a Nosferatu-like feel to them. Harry attends a bar and, having brushed off local junky/rent-boy Mickey (Macaulay Culkin), he meets two other (world famous) artists in town for winter, Belle Noir (Frances Conroy, Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated) and Austin Sommers (Evan Peters). A further encounter with a pale person, involving a home invasion, convinces the family to leave the town but, before they leave, Austin calls Harry to say he has a cure for his writer’s block.

Belle just after turning

Meeting Austin, Harry is given a baggy of pills called muse. After a call from his agent (Leslie Grossman), Harry drops a pill and finds himself writing almost immediately – finishing his pilot episode in record time and it’s the best he has ever written. The pill affects the creative part of the brain and causes it to go into overload. However, it also impacts the users’ blood and they are driven to supplement it by drinking it. The other side effect for a creative is that they lose creativity if they are not on the pill (so they can stop the pill, stop drinking blood, but not create). Belle and Austin have a routine of coming to the town in winter, where the chemist (Angelica Ross) who created and produces it lives, write several pieces for the coming year, murder outside of the town limits, and then live the summer months back home without being on the pill. They direct Harry to a genius tattooist/dentist/muse user (Billie Lourd) who shapes his teeth into a pointed maw and gives him denture caps to hide them.

teeth sharpened

As for the pale people – if a non-creative person takes the pill it quickly turns them into a pale person; twitching, their hair gone, with an overwhelming need for blood and an anger at their lack of creativity (whilst the creatives develop a superiority complex). They are permanently in this state but will follow the commands of, and not attack, creatives on the drug. Why they seemed to have the shaped teeth was beyond me but they did get the long coats from the same source; the tattooist/dentist. With regards the story things start going south with some stolen pills, sloppy kills getting the attention of the new Sheriff (Adina Porter, True Blood & the Vampire Diaries), and also Alma (who is a genius violinist) seeing her dad take the pill and taking one herself in order that she can crack the piece she has been practising and, of course, becoming hungry for blood herself.

Angelica Ross as The Chemist

I liked this, it was clever and a neat twist – whether it knew it or not – on George Sylvester Viereck’s House of the Vampires, where the creatives are the vampires rather than the vampire stealing creativity. The short format worked, preventing it getting stale… to a point. I would have actually stopped it after five episodes and felt the additional, non-Provincetown, coda was superfluous and diminished rather than enhanced the story. I did like the inference during the episodes that Quinten Tarantino was a muse user. Overall, for me, this was a fun, clever little run and (superfluous coda aside) deserves a solid 6.5 out of 10 (with the Death Valley section being stronger still).

The imdb page is here.