SANTA JAWS (2018)

For Christmas a teenage boy gets an ink pen that will (unknowingly to him) bring anything drawn with it to life. He draws a shark wearing a Santa hat. The next morning, the Santa shark eats the kids grandpa while they’re out fishing. Instead of calling 911, the kid tells his parents who tell him to stop lying and take away his phone. After that, the rest of the movie is just the kid and his dorky friends (and eventually his family) fighting the shark and never once calling the police even as they all die one by one. Fin.

As far as Christmas stories go, SANTA JAWS is more believable and less depressing than the Biblical Nativity Story, so it does have that going for it, but unfortunately, while the story also shows a few glimpses of imagination…the execution is fucking abysmal. Horrible dialogue, bland scenery and sets, Satanawful look to the entire thing (is that because it’s shot on a digital camera or something? Why do you look like such ass, bro?), literally not one single person on screen that isn’t part of the story…no cars driving by or people simply walking in the background, middle school play-level acting, zero nudity, zero gore, zero cheerleaders, ugly clothing, an ending that goes on for way too long, weak as hell special effects, multiple bad puns and jokes that kinda make me believe this might have been a comedy.

Comedy or not, SANTA JAWS is an amusing watch, if you’re into this kind of thing. Overall, it sucked, but I did enjoy it and have no regrets in watching it. Although I doubt I'll ever watch it again...unless I decide to explore just how shitty the subtitles are on the DVD. Jesus wept.

[Not part of the review: I’m very fascinated by this entire type of movie. Not killer animal movies, but this budget range of film that is obviously not going to be a masterpiece but somehow marketed well enough to make its money back. It’s endlessly fascinating. I really wish I knew more about it. If there isn’t already, somebody should make a documentary about it. I just love how there seems to be an endless supply of these weird, nothing movies. Then again, maybe I’m not real and I’m just dreaming all of this up as I slowly decay.]

[This really has nothing to do with the review, but on the IMDb page for SANTA JAWS it says there is a "Goof" where "During the fishing scene with Papa and Cody, Cody is holding his rod upside down." I including a shot of Cody fishing with his grandpa and the fishing pole is being held just like the grandpas. With the line roller thing on the bottom. There are two shots of Cody's rod (insert low effort penis joke here) in this scene and they both look like the screenshot included below.]

The subtitles on this DVD are nearly worthless. In this scene, the actor clearly says “Ho, ho, ho. You son of a fish.” and this is what the subtitles say.

CRAWL (2019)

Moron dad ignores warnings to evacuate ahead of a Category 5 hurricane. Moron daughter goes off in search of her moron dad. Good news is she finds him. Bad news is he’s injured and trapped in the crawl space beneath his crib with multiple large ill-tempered alligators. All with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

The most surprising thing about CRAWL is it isn’t surprising at all. I usually enjoy killer animal movies and I love disaster movies, so I mistakenly thought that if you combine those two things with the director of the gnarly HIGH TENSION, that CRAWL would be an awesome bloodbath of alligators ripping people to shreds. Flinging intestines and bloody limbs into the air with gleeful abandon. Nope. The cinematography by Maxime Alexandre looks nice, but, outside of that, CRAWL is strictly by-the-numbers. Quick set-up of character backstories, put characters in dangerous situation, have characters scamper around as various side characters run up the low body count, have main characters learn lessons about family.

I remember seeing CRAWL in the theater and being mildly entertained, but disappointed by the final act. I had hoped that once it was released on home media that it would get a longer cut with added brutal violence, but that didn’t happen. It’s just the same old movie. Zero nudity, very little blood, forgettable looking sets that look like sets, unimaginative script, boring cast, disappointing ending.

Overall, CRAWL is watchable and mildly entertaining. I did like the dog though. She was super cute. I loved when she was swimming. Those back legs were kicking! They should make an alien invasion movie, but just make it about the dog from CRAWL and the cat from that boring ass A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE.  (Literally, the best minutes of that movie are when the cat ran off by itself.) No human main characters at all, just a cat and a dog’s journey across a Robert McCammon-style post-apocalyptic wasteland. Then they both die at the end.

After many harrowing adventures together, our two heroes are on the side of a hill that overlooks a large dead city. The sky is grey and the clouds low. The cat and dog walk together in silence, breathing out ghosts in the bitter cold. The dog misjudges a step and breaks one of his back legs on a loose rock. Before the dog even falls to the ground, the cat knows that they are doomed. Still, she does what she can to comfort her best friend. She brings him a small mouse to eat and nuzzles him. Then, as night settles and the deeper cold moves in, she cuddles up to him to keep him as warm as her little body can. He dies in the night. She feels his body cool next to her. In the morning, she knows that she is healthy enough to move on. But, she also knows that life is not worth living when one is truly alone.