Justin Lee's Maneater

Cody watches the shark thriller Maneater, starring Trace Adkins and Nicky Whelan.

Jaws wasn’t the first movie to use a shark for thrills and suspense – a decade earlier, you even had James Bond nearly being eaten by a shark in Thunderball and Batman needing to use shark repellent in Batman: The Movie – but it is the film that’s responsible for pretty much every shark movie that has been made since. The public has been obsessed with sharks since Jaws was released in 1975. These days we get a steady stream of new shark thrillers, most of them quite low budget, while viewers tune in for a full week of shark programming on the Discovery Channel (which has been running Shark Week since 1988), and the Tubi streaming service has taken things even further by promoting Shark Month, when they fill their service with shark movies and even premiere a couple new ones. I just watched the newly released shark thriller The Reef: Stalked the other week, and I’ve already been given the opportunity to review another one – writer/director Justin Lee’s Maneater.

Maneater has your average shark thriller set-up: after her engagement is broken off, med student Jessie (Nicky Whelan) goes on a tropical vacation with her longtime friends Will (Shane West), Sunny (Porscha Coleman), Ty (Alex Farnham), Emma (Zoe Cipres), and Brianna (Kelly Lynn Reiter). Unfortunately for them, they have chosen to vacation in the wrong place at the wrong time, because the water they’ll be swimming and boating in is being prowled by a Great White shark that keeps attacking people – and Jeff Fahey shows up in the movie to play a shark expert who’s around just long enough to notify us that this shark is a serial killer fish. It doesn’t eat the people it kills. It bites them only as many times as it takes to murder them. It’s killing people for the fun of it.

The film spends a good amount of time with Jessie and her pals before the shark starts going after them, but don’t expect to like or care about these people very much. They are very bland characters. More interesting than them is the couple they catch a boat ride from – Captain Wally (Ed Morrone) and his wife Beth (Kim DeLonghi). Wally is more likeable and entertaining than anybody in the group of vacationers. And even more entertaining than him is Maneater’s version of Quint from Jaws, or Captain Ahab from Moby Dick: fisherman Harlan, who is searching the sea for the shark that killed his daughter. Harlan is played by country singer Trace Adkins, who gets to rage his way through scenes while dropping a barrage of F-bombs.

Shark attacks ensue, frequently brought to the scene with unconvincing CGI. Oddly, at one point there’s even an insert shot of a mangled body floating in the sea where the corpse and the water were created with CGI. It’s like they forgot to get that shot during production and decided to make it in a computer instead of doing a pick-up shot of a dummy in a body of water. That strange choice fits right in alongside the other bad CGI and odd creative choices -  like the score that will make you wonder “what am I listening to?” at times.

There are some ridiculous moments in Maneater that provide laughs, but for the most part the movie is a slog to get through and feels longer than its 80-something minutes. It’s really for viewers who feel compelled to watch as many shark thrillers as they possibly can. Viewers who don’t have time to waste watching lesser takes on the shark thriller concept may regret giving this one a chance.

After an underwhelming climax, the film does leave the door open for a sequel. The continuing adventures of Harlan. And if that movie gets made, I hope it will make Harlan the lead character and really lean into the absurdity that is just peppered into Maneater.