Symptoms of Virus Shark include incoherent plotting, lifeless dull performances and a burning desire to turn it off
Great art has always explored and illuminated the societal concerns of its era. But shit art can do that too, and Virus Shark is bad shark movies’ answer to the question nobody asked, namely what did Mark Polonia, the director of Shark Encounters Of The Third Kind and Sharkenstein, make of the global coronavirus pandemic? Answer: his worst movie yet.
With the world population decimated by a viral pandemic which turns humans and sharks into aggressive mutants, humanity’s last hopes rest with a ragtag band of misfits in the improbably named Cygnus Research Lab where the search for a cure is in its final stages.
Polonia’s films have never been particularly troubled by the conventions of good screenwriting, but Virus Shark charts a new level of laziness. There’s bold use of stock footage to explain away a viral pandemic which started with a shark bite in Australia and an even bolder use of a pseudo-documentary approach to introduce the cast of characters. It’s a masterclass of “tell don’t show” as our narrator – Kristi Parks (Jamie Morgan), cinema’s least convincing shark expert reads out the writer’s character notes. Marvel at the handlebar-moustachioed Gregory McLandon (Titus Himmelberger), cinema’s least convincing infectious disease expert who spends most of his time conspiring with Shannon Muldoon (Sarah Duterte), cinema’s least convincing ruthless corporate executive, Ann Satcher (Natalie Himmelberger), cinema’s least convincing marine studies and plant life, and Rickter D’Amato (Steve Diasparra), a moderately convincing blue collar maintenance engineer who spends his time being ignored by the other jackasses, even when he’s warning them the station is falling apart. finally, there’s Duke Larson (Ken Van Sant), the ex-soldier security chief or possibly someone’s grandad forced to wear a fright wig and headband in an attempt to make him even slightly credible as an action lead. An attempt that fails spectacularly.
Actually, perhaps we have to appreciate Mark Polonia’s almost avant-garde filmmaking technique here. Virus Shark is raw, unfiltered cinema. Set your scenes in credible locations? Unnecessary! Give the cast time to rehearse? That’s for amateurs! Polonia prefers to barely let his cast see the script before they shoot. Then again, maybe nobody got a good look at the script before they spent the weekend filming this because it’s hard to believe anybody would agree to go ahead and film this if they’d read it in advance.
Written by someone who has no knowledge of sharks, viruses or genuine human interactions, Virus Shark is plagued with stupidity, incoherence and so-bad-you-have-to-rewind-to-check gems like D’Amato the maintenance guy checking for leaks in his underwater laboratory complex and being shocked at the presence of “seawater”. Mind you that’s
Although sharks might be the instigating agent of what passes for the plot of the movie, they’re not really involved in the events beyond frequent cuts to footage shot at a local aquarium. It’s a bizarrely undercooked tale of treachery and terrible zombie make-up, much more a shitty zombie movie than a shitty shark movie. It would certainly explain a great deal because I doubt living people could act this badly. It’s also curious that although the whole story is based off the idea that a pandemic started when someone was bitten by an infected shark, nobody seems particularly troubled by one of the characters being bitten by an infected shark in the lab. Very few of the Shark Weak movies I watch are unwatchable to the point where I just can’t bear to get all the way through to the end, but Virus Shark comes pretty darn close. For his original underwater opus, James Cameron made The Abyss. Mark Polonia has made the abysmal. Virus shark is poor even by his standards, looks like it was filmed in a local municipal high school over a weekend on an alleged budget of $182, which feels overpriced. In a way, you have to admire the courage and self-confidence it takes to make this kind of crap and believe that it’s fit for human consumption.
