This is not simply a bad movie, but a stupid and useless sequel – basically a rip-off. Our main star this time is Lorraine Gray as Ellen Brody. By the start of the film, she is a widow since Martin has died from a heart attack, which she claims to be caused by the fear of the shark. That’s your best reason? Mitchell Anderson plays Sean, now taking over his father’s position as police chief. Wait a minute, why is there no mention of him as an employee of the SeaWorld Park or of Katherine? Apparently Universal Studios considers this horrendous piece of garbage as the third in the so called “remarkable Jaws trilogy.” Remarkable nothing! This series is down in the dumps!!!
You want to know how this film starts. Well, the previous films started around summer time. Not this one. Instead, this opens on Christmas Day. Why? Sean is eaten by a shark when he goes out on a boat to clear a log from a buoy. Instead of hearing his screams, the children tune him out by singing Christmas carols. Nice going you little idiots!
In order to get away from everything and spend more time with the family, Sean’s older brother, Michael, played by Lance Guest, convinces his mother to come with him to The Bahamas. Since Ellen has become hydrophobic and is sure the shark is out to kill her entire family, she tells Michael and her grandkids to stay out of the water. But you know what? In a short number of three days, the shark arrives at The Bahamas. Does the shark have a Brody radar equipped to him that he knew they were in The Bahamas?
Ellen spends some time with a pilot named Hoagie, played by Michael Caine, which results in a subplot of Michael jealous of this man in her life. What is going on here, an Oedipus complex? I wouldn’t be surprised, but that would be disgusting! Like all bad movies, this subplot goes unresolved. The screenplay is mainly focused on meaningless stuff of Michael and his crew on the boat going after the shark. One of Michael’s friends is Jake, played by Mario Van Peebles.
Since we see the shark “way” more often than in the previous films, you would think that they would build it up to a scary shark, right? Ebert comments that the shark looks like “canvas with acne” in some scenes and others you can easily see the fake effect.
These shark models move like snails and they look like they are supporting the boats instead of attacking them. Up until the last sequence, the scariest creature we see in the film is an eel. A STINKING EEL!!! That’s how low we have gotten people.
What happens at the end? Ellen is convinced this shark is after her family for revenge, hence the reason it keeps following her. Here is what Ebert had to say about the film, “Her friends pooh-pooh the notion that a shark could identify, follow or even care about one individual human being, but I am willing to grant the point, for the benefit of the plot.”
I am convinced that the shark is after the Brody family, since Martin was the first person responsible for killing the shark and blowing it to Kingdom Come. What shark wouldn’t want to get revenge on the family of the man who blew up their entire family?
Here is a list of things Ebert did not believe: “That Mrs. Brody could be haunted by flashbacks to events where she was not present and that, in some cases, no survivors witnessed. That the movie would give us one shark attack as a dream sequence, have the hero wake up in a sweat, then give us a second shark attack, and then cut to the hero awake in bed, giving us the only thing worse than the old “it’s only a dream” routine, which is the old “is it a dream or not?” routine. That Mrs. Brody would commandeer a boat and sail out alone into the ocean to sacrifice herself to the shark, so that the killing could end. That Caine’s character could or would crash-land his airplane at sea so that he and two other men could swim to Mrs. Brody’s rescue. That after being trapped in a sinking airplane by the shark and disappearing under the water, Caine could survive the attack, swim to the boat, and climb on board - not only completely unhurt but also wearing a shirt and pants that are not even wet. That the shark would stand on its tail in the water long enough for the boat to ram it. That the director, Joseph Sargent, would film this final climactic scene so incompetently that there is not even an establishing shot, so we have to figure out what happened on the basis of empirical evidence.”
You know what else is ludicrous? March 30, Michael Caine brushed away his chance to get the Academy Award in person because he was working on this film. You want to know what was going through his head. The same thing a marine biologist is thinking in this movie: if you don’t go back into the water after something terrible happens to you, you might be too afraid to ever go back in again.
Bottom line, I have to agree with The Nostalgia Critic on what he said about this film: “This is not only stupid, but it’s mostly kind of a bore. The set up is crazy, the characters are not interesting, and it mostly feels padded out. The shark is not as fake as the third film, but it’s still pretty fake. And for a film called ‘The Revenge,’ it’s a pretty lame revenge.” It’s not scary, the writing is all bad, and the script has some of the worst dialogue ever. James Rolfe remembers watching this film on TV, and the shark does get impaled by the bow of the boat, but in theaters, the shark spontaneously combust after getting stabbed with the bow. This film will be rated with a big, fat 0. It’s one of the worst sequels and one of the worst films ever made!
Thank goodness I am done with this horrible series. Check in tomorrow where we will change gears to a much more light-hearted film that you can watch around this time. “Halloween Month” will look at a comedy.
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