Shark Spotlight: Sharks of the Corn
by Emily Nagle
Welcome to Shark Spotlight! After putting a kid-friendly twist on the series yesterday, we’re back to reviewing scary shark movies from Invincible’s very own Galxy catalog in honor of Shark Week. Today’s shark movie is “Sharks of the Corn“.
It’s hard to say what happens in “Sharks of the Corn”, because there’s really so much going on. The main plot revolves around bloodthirsty sharks popping up in Kentucky cornfields and killing people, but a bunch of other stuff goes on as well. Like, Bigfoot is in the movie, and Stonehenge keeps showing up for some reason.
When people describe a bad shark movie, they often describe the visual aspects of it as bad – for example, special effects reminiscent of those free iPhone movie effect apps or super overdone acting. It’s easy to make these deliberately bad to poke fun at other sharksploitation movies, but “Sharks of the Corn” is just poorly made as a whole.
There’s inconsistencies with the audio mixing at times; for example, during a scene where the characters are talking while walking through a cornfield, their dialogue is barely audible. Similarly, there are times where the music is too loud, and drowns out the characters’ dialogue. Sometimes, these scenes with poor audio mixing are followed by a scene where the dialogue sounds fine, which is disorienting because we have no clue what the characters were saying before.
With that being said, “Sharks of the Corn” definitely wasn’t unbearable. The poor production, along with the chaotic story and handheld cinematography, gives the movie the same energy as a high school TV studio project. This made it a little nostalgic – who didn’t love making nonsensical movies with their friends when they were kids? Yes, it’s almost as long as “House Shark” – it’s an hour and 45 minutes long – but it was nowhere near as unwatchable.
Yes, I said earlier this week that “House Shark” was all over the place, and talked about how bad it was. But the reason why having all that stuff going on in “House Shark” didn’t work was because it tried too hard. It overdid everything to the point where it got old really fast. Meanwhile, “Sharks of the Corn” is so bizarre that it holds your attention – there’s something new every second! First someone’s getting mauled by a shark in a cornfield, then you’ll blink and suddenly there’s a guy rambling about pleasing a shark goddess.
After having watched three different shark movies this week (and my sanity is hanging on by a thread), it seems appropriate to start ranking them as I go along. So, here are my rankings for Galxy’s shark films so far, from worst to best:
3. House Shark
2. Sharks of the Corn
1. Bad CGI Sharks
Tune in to Shark Spotlight again tomorrow to see which movie is up next, and for an updated ranking of Galxy’s shark movies! Until then, “Sharks of the Corn” is free to watch on Galxy.