shark movies – Horror Ghouls

It’s Shark Week and all, and since I’ve already talked about the modern classic that is Ouija Shark four years ago, now it’s time to take a look at the sequel.

Ouija Shark 2 opens with a quick summary of the first one where Anthony (John Migliore) sacrificed himself to save his daughter from getting eaten by a ghost shark. Anthony (John Migliore again) has since gotten stuck in a cheap green-screened Hell as a twisted parody of Dr. Strange where he’s getting chased and fighting against… gorillas. Of course, what else did you expect.

Anthony’s supposedly grieving wife (played by Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith) gives an emotionless speech with some crocodile tears, standing by his gravestone and swears that she will bring him back. She visits the fortune-teller who helped Anthony crossing over to the other side, in order to whack the shark and get some answers. The crystal ball tells us what we already know: that he’s in Hell. We can’t leave him THERE. We have to SAVE him, Anthony’s wife says with the emotion of a flat google voice. It’s not gonna be easy, the fortune-teller replies. It’s gonna be a barefoot trip to the park, don’t you worry.

Because after a quick meeting with The Grim Reaper (played by a dude with some cheap white paint on his face), Anthony gets some assistance from a ghost alligator which will help him finishing the evil shark. And just out of the blue, as expected, we have a musical number here where a goofy Satan and his TikTok brides show Taylor Swift how you make a catchy song (and that was not irony). Meanwhile, in the land of the living, Anthony’s wife is in the local woods to ask the mom of the fortune-teller for help. She’s a hermit and not interested. Shove off, she says. Can’t blame her. She changes her mind, though. But who cares. Now we want some shark mayhem, as the poster teases us with.

And the poster didn’t lie. If the film wasn’t amateur-hour already, just wait for the last thirty minutes – or as Satan himself says: You’ve seen nothing yet, folks! Here we have a series of random nightly cityscape shots where the ghost shark and the gator boss fight each other. Both creatures are, just like in the first film, ultra-cheap looking cute puppets that toddlers would have in their bed, and it looks as epic and cinematic as you’d expect. The gator spits out yellow-glowing puffy CGI balls while Satan controls the shark with a ouija board as he’s laughing and having a blast. The military chimes in and fires some missiles. The shark zaps them by shooting force-lighting through its eyes. Lots of buildings get destroyed, even a nuclear power plant (!) Oh, the mayhem, carnage and destruction! Roland Emmerich would eat his heart out. Really intense stuff, in other words. We see a handful of extras who run left and right in front a black, foggy background, all of which I would bet is super proud to be a part of Ouija Shark 2. And don’t blink if you wanna catch the two-second cameo by Lloyd Kaufman.

Ouija Shark 2 is written and directed by the main protagonist himself, John Migliore. And he goes all in for a crazier tone than the first one with a script that must have been co-written by a group of eight-year olds who just made it up as they went along. While the first had a whopping budget of 300 (yes, three hundred) Canadian dollars, I’d guess this one is slightly higher (50 dollars extra maybe), which gives us a few more green screen backgrounds rather than just the local woods and the director’s backyard. The acting is, of course, a big factor here, which is as strong and solid as you’d see in an elementary school play. But the one who takes the golden raspberry here, is Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith. She’s so stiff, lifeless and ridiculously robotic that she makes Mark Zuckerberg actually look like a normal human being. That in itself quite impressive.

So, whats next for this epic franchise, we may wonder? How about Ouija Shark 3: The Harpoon Made Me Do it, just to spitball an idea.

Writer and director: John Migliore
Country & year: Canada, 2022
Actors: John Migliore, Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith, Kylie Gough, Simon Wheeldon, Lena Montecalvo, Jay MacAulay, Sabrina Migliore, Emmalene Pruden, Nicholas Migliore
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21409958/

Prequel: Ouija Shark (2020)

So, it’s time to check out one of the newest, fresh releases of shitty shark films that have been spewed out like a never-ending diarrhea during the last two decades. This joke of a film is “directed” by Brett Kelly (who goes under the pseudonym Scott Patrick), who’s made a laundry list of no-budget films since 2001, such as Jurassic Shark, Raiders of the Lost Shark, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Avenging Force: The Scarab, Kingdom of the Vampire, Agent Beetle, and so on. Ouija Shark has no relation to Ghost Shark or Shark Exorcist, for those who would even give a shit.

The “plot” can be summed up in one short sentence: A young woman comes across a Ouija board at the local beach, which her and her friends are using to summon a… man-eating ghost shark.

Do I really need to say more? I mean, seriously, just take a look at the damn trailer, that speaks for itself. It’s exactly what you think it is. To even call this a “film” is one of the biggest understatements of the year, having a running time of about one hour and ten minutes, with zero budget, talent or script. It looks more like a compilation of gag reels stitched randomly together. Pure cringe from start to finish.

The shark itself is pretty funny, though, which is just a layer that wobbles around on the screen, while the actors really struggle to seem at least a little bit terrified as they are being chased in the woods in broad daylight. The shark also roars like a lion, which is actually a thing that goes way back to Shark Attack 2 from 2000. I also like the sound effect when the shark is supposed to eat its victims, which sounds like someone taking two bites of an apple in a videogame to increase the health bar. And you can forget about any blood and gore, the victims just disappear into thin air. The lack of effort is quite astonishing, this is a whole another level of not even trying.

One of the cheesiest moments of the film include some scenes featuring a non-convincing fortune teller with a flashing plastic ball, probably bought on the Halloween section at Walmart for under one dollar, while the rest of the budget must have been spent on the misleading poster which doesn’t represent the movie in any single way. However, if you know exactly what kind of film this is before pressing the play button, you may at least be in for some good laughs! Because, with the right mindset, low-budget indie horror like this can be an entertaining way to waste a bit of your time.

Director: Brett Kelly
Country & year: Canada, 2020
Actors: Leslie Cserepy, Leslie Cserepy, Kylie Gough, Robin Hodge, Staci Marie Lattery, Kyle Martellacci, John Migliore
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt11650674/

Sequel: Ouija Shark 2 (2022)

Tag: shark movies

Ouija Shark 2 (2022)

Ouija Shark (2020)