2012’s Avalanche Sharks takes place during Spring Break.

Woo hoo!  SPRIIIIIIIIING BREAAAAAAAK!  If there’s anything that I truly miss about college, it’s Spring Break!  What do you think about when you think about Spring Break?  You think about the sun,  You think about the days and the nights spent lazily lounging in a bikini.  You think about the binge-drinking and the drug-taking and one night stands that you regret the next morning and the realization that you’re only young once.

Avalanche Sharks has all of that.  It also has a lot of snow and also sharks.

SHARK BREAK!  Woo hoo!

These aren’t any old sharks.  These are ghost sharks that swim around in the snow and which pop out to eat the employees and guests of a ski resort.  You may be asking yourself how a shark can swim in the snow and I’m not totally sure myself.  It probably helps that they’re ghost sharks and not living sharks.  Still, it seems like even a ghost shark would prefer the ocean.  The film suggests that the sharks are the result of an ancient curse.  It also suggests that the sharks are the result of global warming.  I’m going to guess that it’s a combination.  The ancient curse was reactivated by global warming.  Either that or the ghost sharks escaped from a lab and there’s been a massive cover-up to try to keep people from discovering the truth.  But, seriously, when has that ever happened?

The movie features the usual collection of characters whose names you will struggle to remember after the movie ends.  (I struggled to remember them even before the movie ended.)  It’s Spring Break, after all!  Why go to the beach when you can just go to a ski resort and apparently spend several days sitting in a jacuzzi?  The jacuzzi is a major location in this film and it’s also the film’s excuse to feature bikinis.  Myself, I couldn’t help but notice that the characters who got in the jacuzzi apparently never got out, even to sleep.  72 hours in a jacuzzi is something you might do to win a car but it’s not necessarily a good idea when there are ghost sharks around.

“You are the sexiest Marine biologist I know,” one guy says at one point and that’s pretty much sets the standard for the film’s dialogue.  The movie is quickly divided between those who know about the avalanche sharks and those who don’t but, to the film’s credit, knowledge does not equal safety.  Just about anyone can and will get eaten by the sharks.  Some of the gore is a bit icky.  The start of the film features a skier suffering a rather serious injury and I briefly had to hide my eyes.  That said, it also appears that the gore budget was used up early because the later effects aren’t quite as impressive.  What is impressive is the performance of James Ouimet as crazy old Duffy.  Duffy is the one who tells everyone that they’re doomed.  He seeks revenge after losing his dog to the sharks.  “LUNA!” he yells and you totally buy it.

As my friend Jim put it, this is a film the defies a traditional rating.  Yes, it would be easy to dismiss it as being another shark movie but, at the same time, it’s so stupidly entertaining that you can’t help but watch.  Someone somewhere once said, “Give them snow sharks!” and this film delivered.  And for that, I say thank you.