An appalling would-be thriller in which a series of hackneyed, virtually bloodless shark attacks take back seat to a sub-standard conspiracy thriller story with a premise that bears more than a nod to DEEP BLUE SEA. The end result is a bland, boring movie which won't even appeal to bad movie lovers, only to those with only the lowest of tolerance levels. Set in Africa (but we never learn whereabouts),SHARK ATTACK doesn't even exploit any local colour in its predictable story of two people going up against the authorities, instead wasting what could have been a good premise with shallow material which has been written to death already.

Casper Van Dien takes the leading role and is as wooden and charmless as ever, adding absolutely no personality to his "hero". Jenny McShane is almost as bad as the partner/love interest, who runs around in a bikini a lot but otherwise is unmemorable. The second-billed Ernie Hudson pops up in what amounts to a cameo role as the unsurprising bad guy, and while it's nice to see Hudson as the baddie for a change, you won't help but feel short-changed at the lack of screen time he occupies.

R-rated only because of the strong language that occasionally pops up, the goriest that SHARK ATTACK gets is in scenes where sharks are autopsied and their internal organs removed and examined. The various underwater attacks (while paying their inevitable dues to JAWS) are poorly-staged with the minimum suspense and excitement, and the sharks fail to be very menacing. The film only seems to pick up for the violent, showdown climax between baddies and a gang of fishermen (!),which is undoubtedly enjoyable for how long in lasts. Unfortunately we have an hour and twenty minutes of unrelenting tedium to sit through before then, when even the genre staples of car chases and shoot-outs are staged without relish. Incredibly followed by a sequel a year later, so I guess somebody must have liked this movie. Fans with taste should, however, give it a miss.

Scientist Cordell McQueen is killed in South Africa in an attack by a shark, the very thing he's gone there to investigate. A cryptic message left on his colleague Casper Van Dien's answering machine sends Van Dien and McQueen's sister Jenny McShane are off to South Africa to investigate.

What they find when they reach the coastal village where the attack occurred is a town ready to die. The resort that Ernie Hudson operates has no tourists and the fisherman don't go out at all because they're afraid of the water. Over the past few years there's been an unaccounted for spike in the number of shark attacks. The only thing operating is a scientific research institute where another colleague Bentley C. Mitchum is conducting research into a cancer cure.

Of course all this ties together with Mitchum conducting some really ghoulish experiments and Hudson playing everyone for suckers. Mitchum maybe thinking of a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but Hudson's got a far more practical motive for his actions.

Shark Attack is your average action adventure film with the cast all fitting nicely into their roles. One thing I would have done was cut Mitchum's death scene, just have him die with no last words. That particular piece of dialog was truly atrocious. Someone should have sicced one of those spiked up sharks on the writers.

I will get this off my chest, I don't like these Shark Attack movies, they are cheap and cheesy, but for some strange reason there is some novelty value to be had. The first Shark Attack is not as bad its sequels, 3 is the worst of the series in my opinion, but that's not saying it. It suffers from all the problems of its successors and some. The editing and effects are cheap, the sharks aren't menacing at all, are underused and their attacks are seriously devoid of tension, suspense, excitement and heart. The story is drawn out with the middle dragging badly as well as side-lining the sharks, and predictable too with no scene coming of any big surprise and you do for example have an inkling of how it's going to end. The script is cheesy complete with sluggish pacing and clichéd characters, while the direction is inept and the acting really quite dire with nobody standing out. In conclusion, appalling, but a film to revel in how awful it is. 1/10 Bethany Cox