★ out of ★★★★★
Directed by Le-Van Kiet.
Laughably bad CGI. Overcooked and undercooked use of green screen. A shrill, bothersome, and awkward performance by Alicia Silverstone. And the sharks don’t even appear until the 50+ minute mark. These are just a few of problems with The Requin that could honestly fill an ocean.
The Requin has one of the coolest looking posters of 2022. And that’s one of the bigger problems with the film. No shark that’s nearly this size, or as scary looking, ever appears in the film. It’s a literal and figurative bait (get it?) and switch. Don’t judge a book by its cover and never look a gift shark in the mouth!
The Requin is a film that is undone by an absurd plot involving a couple whose beachside bungalow floats out to sea in the middle of a storm — courtesy of the aforementioned god-awful CGI. Alicia Silverstone (Jaelyn) annoyingly plays the wife who has waterborne trauma that comes as the result of the death of her child during childbirth. She shrieks, cries, whines, and hollers through every scene. Really. Every last one. There’s not a single scene where your not saying to yourself “C’mon shark. You got this. A couple more chomps and she’ll be gone!”
As the couple floats out to sea Jaelyn’s husband Kyle (James Tupper) manages to injure his leg three separate times in 15 minutes. Sound ridiculous? It is. His maladies render him a useless pile of chum. The sharks are out for Kyle — even though they should really take a bite out of Jaelyn — but they eventually do get their man.
Each scene in the film has weirdly different lighting, CGI, and green screen. Some scenes look like they’re clearly shot in a pool, others look like a lake, and a few barely pass for the ocean. The couple stumbles through a series of dumb and inconsequential scenes as Jaelyn caterwauls absurd dialogue and wild guttural howls and hiccups.
If you’re wondering whether Jaelyn makes it out, the better question is “who cares?” Alicia Silverstone’s acting coupled with shockingly bad CGI, and lack of any dramatic tension, manifest in some serious audience malaise. Sadly, Silverstone has turned in some pretty decent roles in recent years, including one of the most tragic from 2019, the Lodge.
Worse yet? The idiotic canned shark footage is only rivaled by the shark scenes in 1979’s Zombi, but at least Zombi had a cool shark vs. zombie fight to the death. The Requin has nothing to offer. No zombies. No shark/zombie fights.
Trust us, this film could have been well served by a zombie/shark fight.
The film’s title, Requin, is apparently Shark in French/Spanish. Why did filmmaker Le Van-Kiet chose this title? The answer again is “who cares?” The Requin is remarkably bad film making, acting, and visual effects. A true shark trifecta. With a budget of almost $9 million, it’s clear that $9 million just ain’t what it used to be. Save yourself a couple bucks and rewatch Jaws II, or the zombie/shark fight scene in Zombi, or Two-Headed Shark Attack, or Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. God only knows anything is better than this shark-infested mish-mash.
We’re giving the Requin a single star. Largely this is based on the poster, but again, be forewarned, the poster is a ruse!
The Requin is Rated R and available for streaming everywhere.