Swim

With Meg 2 lighting up the box office and pissing off critics upset that a movie about a giant prehistoric shark isn’t a Wes Anderson quirk-fest, it’s about time I once again scrape the bottom of the ocean floor in search of the best of bad shark movies. Enter Swim.

Swim follows a similar format to Alexander Aja’s thoroughly enjoyable Crawl and the entertaining and little seen Burning Bright. Each film is a mixture of home invasion and animal attack, and while Burning Bright featured the leading light of Brianna Evigan and the novelty of a unique premise versus Aja’s nuanced experience of bringing quality to somewhat tacky ideas, Swim is on the lower end of what you can expect from a film about being trapped in a house with a big beastie.

A family (who never once feel like a real family) are heading to their summer vacation rental. Dismissing the advice of the weathermen and the huge, dark clouds on the horizon and ignoring the obvious shenanigans of their previously-proven-to-be-shady landlord, the barrel their way down the coast in search of one last get together before their eldest heads off to college. Daddy (Joey Lawrence) was only contracted to be on set for two days, so he spends the majority of the film away from the others, yelling into a phone in his car, before an ill-advised and illogical rescue attempt. As the storm gets more fierce and the waves rise (to levels which would surely cause irreversible damage to the entire State), an excessively hungry shark decides that the family is in need of downsizing, so heads on inside and starts chomping.

Swim is the sort of movie which the tired criticism of ‘predictable’ was made for. Not only did I, within the opening two minutes, correctly predict who would be eaten, but in which order and under what specific circumstances. Aside for some late canon fodder additions, my predictions came true and I began to wonder if I was in fact watching a movie that other people had written and directed, or if there was some psychic connection between me and some God Tier AI which was able to instantly convert my thoughts into what was happening on screen.

Thankfully, the shark effects aren’t too awful. They’re not great, but in most cases we just see a brief fin cutting through the waves. Beyond the insane logic of the shark coming into the house, then up the stairs, then up the other stairs while still somehow being hungry after its first taste of idiot flesh, it doesn’t go sailing through the air or perform death defying feats of anti-biology. There isn’t much acting on display – Joey Lawrence shouts for a bit, poor old Andy Lauer looks like he has zero awareness of what a movie even is, and Jennifer Field as the mum is very adapt at making an ‘O’ shape with her mouth. There’s never a sense of threat and the only enjoyment comes from seeing what the next silly decision will be or whether or not I’ll pass out Rum by the time dad finally makes it to the house. The kills do keep coming relatively thick and fast through the movie, and that’s really why we come to watch, right?

You know what to expect from a movie like this, and it delivers. It’s not good, and it’s not on the level of ridiculousness as the Sharknado series, but it will help you enjoy your Rum buzz. Let us know what you think of Swim in the comments!