For the last 50 years of cinema, the truest summer blockbuster seasons have included one key thing: the shark movie.Jawspopularized this subgenre in 1975, and everything after it has typically intended to elicit similar fear. But more often, shark movies fall into a goofy category of filmmaking, tending towards the broad or over-the-top.
Onsen Shaku, akaHot Spring Shark Attack, tends towards this latter characterization of the summershark movie. The Japanese film has a ludicrous plotline, focusing on disappearances that occur at an onsen (a Japanese hotel built around hot springs).
When dead bodies start showing up at the nearby beach, a team of experts discovers thatsharks are swimming through the pipes and attacking people in the hot springs.All of this is shown withHot Spring Shark Attack’s low-budget CGI.
None of this is anywhere near realism, but that doesn’t matter. With a movie titledHot Spring Shark Attack, I was hoping for something over-the-top and fun, and that is exactly what I got.
The Juvenile Visuals Add To Hot Spring Shark Attack’s Charm
The Sharks Were, At Least, Distinctive
For a portion of the first act, I felt thatHot Spring Shark Attackwas really lacking in sharks. This is a common folly of shark movies, who may not have the budget to show the toothed killers as often as they would like to. At first, the film seemed to be showing the deaths through implications, shying away from revealing the sharks onscreen.
Hot Spring Shark Attackdoes not shy away from its ridiculous visuals, but leans into them.
But once we see the sharks in more detail, they are just as absurd as I would have hoped. The shark attack scenes show a shark so unrealistic that it appears flat and two-dimensional. When up close, they look like plaster-cast stuffed animals.
Something about this, however, just makes the film more endearing.Hot Spring Shark Attackdoes not shy away from its ridiculous visuals — it leans into them.It’s unafraid to show what it’s made of, even if it is made on no budget.
This carries over into other visuals as well. When the leading scientist is explaining how the sharks are working their way into the onsens' pipe system, for example, the filmmaker chooses a clip-art-esque 2D-animated graphic.
Moments like these create an undeniable sense of goofiness to the film.Hot Spring Shark Attackwas never going to be the nextJaws, but the further it strays away from genuine fear, the better the experience.
The Film’s Relationship With Dialogue And Editing Is Confusing
The Scenes Felt Incomplete For Much Of The Film
None of this is to say thatHot Spring Shark Attackhas high-quality filmmaking. A lot of the dialogue left me baffled. Especially at the outset, conversations within scenes felt almost incomplete.
This was not aided by the film’s editing. The movie is replete with hard cuts that yank us from scene to scene. These technical elements giveHot Spring Shark Attacka sophomoric feel that seems less stylistic and more unsophisticated.
Morihito Inoue Still Leans Into Hot Spring Shark Attack’s Chaos
And He Never Tries To Make It More Than It Is
Despite its flaws, I could not help but keep having fun withHot Spring Shark Attack. One of the things I respect most about this movie is that director Morihito Inoue does not hold back. He clearly did not have a high budget for this project, but he did not let that stop him.
The film continually uses a pseudo-scientific framework to explain increasingly unbelievable phenomena. This even persists throughout the second act, when the sharks begin magically creating “shark traps” that initially look like puddles on the ground.
This culminates in a third act that is adventurous and over-the-top in its setup. Its actual special effects are wildly bad, but thatdoes not stop Inoue from adding more elaborate scenarios to the script.It was gutsy to do this without the technical strength to back it, but the actors also lean into the ridiculousness of it all.
The movie’s boldness helps craft an entertaining ride that is incredibly zany. Is this among the best shark movies? Absolutely not. But by the timeHot Spring Shark Attackwas over, I couldn’t help but smile.
