Written and directed by Morihito Inoue, in a small hot spring town in Japan, a ferocious ancient shark reawakens and begins terrorizing the local hot spring facilities. As the threat escalates, the townspeople band together to protect their beloved town from the menacing predator, leading to a fierce and thrilling battle. Starring: Shoichiro Akaboshi, Takuya Fujimura, Kiyobumi Kaneko, Koichi Makigami, Masaki Naito, Mio Takaki and Shigeo Ôsako.
After many decades of trashy, cheesy and chaotically messy shark attack flicks, there’s no way that anyone could possibly enter Hot Spring Shark Attack unaware of what sort of unapologetic mayhem awaits them. You go into a film like this with the understanding that it’s going to be ridiculous from the second it starts and it’s only going to get more ridiculous as time goes on. That’s exactly what Morihito Inoue gives you, it’s socially accepted, and encouraged, insanity for seventy minutes.
The story goes from one gigantic, baffling, ludicrous move to another. It’s the equivalent of having a terrible day, when as soon as you think you have an answer for one problem, ten more pop up in its place. These sharks have a remarkable talent for hiding each of their many attributes until they can cause the most chaos. While of course all of that is highly reminiscent of the many fin-happy flicks that have come before Hot Spring Shark Attack, it actually feels even more reminiscent of old-school disaster films. Especially those of the 1950s and 1960s, hitting those perky and highly melodramatic notes, overreacting to everything and finding themselves in one impossible position after another.
Having that set of expectations definitely comes into play with the visual because undoubtedly, Hot Spring Shark Attack is relying on some dodgy special effects, or even just what seems to be hand puppets at times. It’s that classic choice of going all out while not having anywhere near the budget to get where you want to go. That does hold a certain charm because at the same time, you’d never be able to create realistic effects of the types of scenes they’re creating, no matter how much money you had. However, it’s definitely being held back by the quality of the scenes outside of the effects, the cinematography feels incredibly dull, like all the colours have been muted.
Another quintessential element of shark flicks is that it’s stuffed to the gills with characters and realistically, you don’t get too attached to any of them because you never know who’s going to find themselves being chum for our teethy friends. All of the ensemble does well to tap into that exaggerated atmosphere, with a good mix of fear and bravado. Although, the police chief does seem like he’s drunk for the most part and it’s hard to tell whether that’s intentional or not. They’re all fairly forgettable with the exception of the one character who’s pulled straight from the action-hero mould and gets to have a lot of fun.
Hot Spring Shark Attack is exactly what you think it’s going to be and even more. The story is ridiculous with a double helping of absurd, it doesn’t just double down on its hilariously insane concept, it somehow keeps growing all throughout the film. Yes, it does look pretty terrible and in some ways that’s fun and in others it’s disappointing, but it’s also par for the course, it’s almost a requirement of a film like this to not look good. Morihito Inoue went all in on making a film for the dedicated shark flick fans and they will have a lot of fun with this one.
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