Good afternoon, House of Madness sharkies:
Sometimes in life, you just know what you're getting yourself into before it happens. No way you eat at Taco Bell without first realizing that the enjoyment will last about 15 minutes before you're sitting on the toilet reading a Double Digest Archie comic. You don't go to a Carrot-Top show and then complain that the entire thing was made up of props and cheesy one-liners, followed up by demanding your money back claiming your trip to Vegas has now been tainted. You don't go to Ikea with your wife and then bitch about being lost two hours later in a maze that leads to nowhere; if you want to get at those delicious meatballs, you're gonna have to pay the piper and keep a positive attitude while she looks at every single throw pillow, and pines over plastic cutlery that you get to assemble when you get home. When it came to "The Black Demon", I knew I wasn't in for a secret screening of next year's Oscar winner, but I still may have underestimated just how silly shark movies have become.
Paul (Josh Lucas) works for an oil empire, and has headed down to Baja to inspect an oil rig while vacationing with his wife Ines (Fernanda Urrejola) and children Audrey (Venus Ariel) and Tommy (Carlos Solorzano). It's a simple inspection, and once Paul gets ferried out to the rig and back, his family can begin their vacation. Upon arrival, Paul finds the oil rig in a catastrophic state with nobody to be found anywhere, and he assumes it's been deserted until he finally comes across two men claiming to be the last two aboard. As everything is being explained to Paul, another boat arrives delivering his wife and children after a confrontation they had at the restaurant he left them at to wait. As they all watch the boat head back to shore, an impossibly huge megalodon shark swallows the vessel whole, and now their real adventure begins.
Take an ounce of corporate greed, a pinch of a dark curse brought on by the aforementioned greed, and add a sprinkle of extinct shark species, and you've got a recipe for "The Black Demon". As everyone tries to find a way to cope with their current situation and find a way to escape the rig and the giant shark, I was left trying to decide what exactly it is I was watching instead of the silly shark movie I signed up for. The main issue with the film is it takes itself waaaaaaaaaay too seriously, and instead of trying to capitalize on a silly yet overused concept, it actually tries to come across as a serious series of events. Not once was I able to resonate with anything happening, and if I had to roll my eyes one more time at the amateur CGI, I think they may have actually rolled into the back of my head and I could have finally checked out my own ass. I definitely didn't want something along the lines of "Sharknado", as I find those films ridiculously stupid, but I was expecting it to be more of a silly thrill ride like "Deep Blue Sea" or "The Meg"; unfortunately, "The Black Demon" tried to be more like "The Black Swan", but not even Natalie Portman could have saved this film.
Madness Meter: 3/10
NB
