When it comes to Spring Break, there’s nothing worse than having all of your plans ruined by a prehistoric shark.

I mean, let’s just ask the characters at the center of the 2012 film, Jurassic Shark.  Jill (Emannuelle Carriere), Tia (Christine Emes), Kristen (Celine Filion), and Mike (Kyle Martellacci) were planning to spend their Spring Break taking a boat across the least impressive lake in Canada.  They thought it would be a good time but then the giant shark showed up, ate Mike, and left Jill, Tia, and Kristen stranded on a tiny island….

“Wait?” you’re saying,  There’s a shark in a lake?”

Yes.

“Sharks can’t live in lakes.”

This one can.

“Why?”

Because it’s prehistoric and shit.  Hence, the name of the film.

“But if it’s prehistoric, what’s it doing alive in the 21st Century?”

Well, y’see, the shark was frozen in a glacier but than a big evil oil company did some big evil things and, as a result, the glacier either melted or it fell apart or maybe there was an earthquake or something and now, as a result, there’s a big prehistoric shark swimming around the lake.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

It doesn’t have to make sense.  It’s a Spring Break shark movie.  Now, if I may continue my review….

Anyway, Jill, Tia, and Kristen are stranded on an island but it turns out that they’re not alone!  Not only is there a random oil company scientist guy but there’s also three suspicious-looking people who are dressed in all black and are carrying guns!  It turns out that the people dressed in all-black are art thieves.  They were attacked by the shark while trying to make a getaway with a stolen painting.  Now, the painting is at the bottom of the lake and no one can retrieve it because of the prehistoric shark.  However, once everyone gets together, surely they can figure out a way to escape with a minimal loss of life….

Nope!  Not going to happen!  Unfortunately, no one on the island is smart enough for the audience to really root for.  Instead of working together, they just point guns and debate who is going to distract the shark while someone else gets the painting.  This is a movie that will have you cheering for the shark all the way, which is probably the way it was meant to be.  Out of everyone in the film, the shark’s got the most personality and it’s always easy to understand his motivations.  He wants to eat.  It’s as simple as that.

The main reason I watched Jurassic Shark is because it’s got a 1.5 rating on the imdb and was, for a little while, the lowest rated film on the entire site.  Whenever I discover that a film is disliked by that many people, I simply have to watch.  As is often the case, I think the imdb voters are being a bit overly critical with Jurassic Shark.  Yes, the film is pretty bad and the shark spends way too much time offscreen.  There’s way too many scenes of people slowly walking from one end of the island to the other.  There are some major continuity errors and the CGI is really bad and there’s a scene that’s supposed to be set at night but the day for night lighting is so ineptly handled that it’s almost to follow what’s going on.

But — and here’s the thing — there’s absolutely nothing about this film that indicates that it was meant to be taken seriously.  I think for a film to be truly terrible, it has to lack self-awareness.  It has to be clueless as to how bad or silly or pretentious it is.  For better or worse, Jurassic Shark seems to realize that it’s a low-budget Z-grade horror film and that sets it apart from a serious relationship drama like The Room or an environmentalist statement like Birdemic.  I mean, as easy as it is to criticize almost every aspect of Jurassic Shark, this is a film that features a slow-motion shot of giant shark flying over someone’s head.  It’s a scene that is just ludicrous and silly enough to work.

Jurassic Shark may not be good but it’s not really pretentious enough to be terrible.  If nothing else, it teaches the viewers an important lesson about how easily Spring Break can go wrong, especially when you’re celebrating in Canada.  For the most part, it’s a forgettable film but it has just enough lunacy to occasionally be memorable.