A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN NAVIGATES HER GRIEF AND FINDS LOVE AGAIN. AND THERE'S A SHARK.
★★☆☆☆ (Don’t Bother)
Director: Joseph Sargent
1987
Jaws: The Revenge is one of the strangest and least scary horror movies ever made, but I didn’t know that until I got older. When I was a kid and enjoying the terrifying offerings on TBS, such as Night of the Lepus, Piranha, and The Blob, I thought nothing strange about Jaws: The Revenge when they showed it after Jaws and Jaws 3 (oddly, no Jaws 2, but who can blame them?). I was fixated on that woman getting chomped off the banana boat. Remember the spurting blood? The screaming? The little girl next to her getting an eye full of carnage? I even had the Nintendo game, the biggest waste of time since Marble Madness—I can still hear that sonar doing the little “blips” in my sleep.
But now I’m old and some things just ain’t what they used to be. Jaws: The Revenge is one of them. My few vague memories of bloody action have been replaced by the real movie, a hilarious drama about grief and Boomers finding love again. And a telepathic shark. It is an entirely different experience when you’re a grownup. My adult take on Jaws: The Revenge is this: A producer said, “Hey, we need another Jaws. Does anyone have a script we can use?” After they were given the screenplay for a Lifetime movie about a widow mourning the death of her son, they shoehorned in a vengeful Great White and the tropical flavor of Mario Van Peebles.
When widowed Ellen Brody’s (Lorraine Gray) adult son is killed on the job, she joins her remaining son Michael, his artist wife, and their adorable daughter in the island paradise they call home. The First Kill involving her son is a memorable one, set to the tune of carolers alongside Amity Island’s dock. Even though we can’t see much of the attack in the dark water of the bay, we are invested in his survival just because he has followed in the footsteps of his father, the deceased Chief Brody, and has a wonderful life with his mother and fiancée. His first scenes with them give us a complete window to their loving relationships, and this is where I want to point out that the script, the dramatic parts of it, is fantastic. If you watch Jaws: The Revenge as a study on grieving, it’s a pretty good film—Lorraine Gray perfectly displays the excruciating pain of motherly loss. The dialogue paints a picture of reasonable characters living simple lives, and the actors do an excellent job delivering stable performances, with one exception. Before Jar Jar Binks there was Jake (Peebles), a cartoonish Bahamian with a wildly fake accent, who works with Michael on sea snail research. Every time this over-the-top personality is in the scene, you can’t help but pay attention to him, and this isn’t good when a shark is about to eat a schooner.
Not long after Ellen arrives, she’s swept off her feet by a British, middle-aged pilot named Hoagie (Michael Caine). All the dots in a romance novel about two lovers of a certain age are connected here. They dance in a Caribbean parade, slow dance at a New Years Eve party, and take slow walks along the beach while confessing deep, dark secrets. Thanks to this dashing pilot, Ellen is getting her groove back…but nature has other plans. It has other plans in the form of a shark bent on revenge. After her son is killed, Ellen is convinced that the relatives (?) of the shark blown up by Chief Brody are after her entire family. First, it allegedly gave her husband a fatal heart attack, then it ate her policeman son, and soon it will find Michael, who spends his days in the ocean with snails and Jake, so she begs him to quit his job. Her argument isn’t taken seriously by loved ones who believe these thoughts are a result of her loss.
But she’s right. Our villain is a shark who possesses the frame of mind to push a large log against a buoy knowing that someone in the Brody bloodline would be the one to go out there in a boat and try to move it. Our villain was able to sense that Ellen and company flew to the Bahamas, so he followed her there. Our villain lies in wait for Michael to jump off his ship or for Ellen’s granddaughter to go on a banana boat in the ocean. This murderous fish is toying with Ellen, driving her crazy. She gradually loosens up thanks to Hoagie, but when the Great White rears its ugly head to try and take Michael’s little girl, Ellen decides to steal a ship and go on a suicide mission. Her reasoning is ludicrous but so is the entire plot of this movie about a shark that roars. The shark roars.
SPOILERS The only deaths are those of Ellen’s son and the young woman on the float with her granddaughter. In the final battle for the ocean, two characters survive injuries that would kill a person in real life (Jake was gnawed in half and lost liters of blood) and dreams of Great White attacks—meant to keep the audience awake—don’t count as horror kills. The fact that this is labeled a horror film is as laughable as Ellen’s ranting about a shark stalker. SPOILERS END
“…when the Great White rears its ugly head to try and take Michael’s little girl, Ellen decides to steal a ship and go on a suicide mission. Her reasoning is ludicrous but so is the entire plot of this movie about a shark that roars. The shark roars.”
I’m not alone in my sentiments. If you haven’t noticed, Jaws: The Revenge marked the last time anyone said, “Let’s make a Jaws movie”, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Blumhouse resurrected the franchise. But really, what can you do with the mythology that hasn’t been done by the first movies or the schlock Sharknado films? Jaws 2 is unwatchable, Jaws 3-D is amazing camp that still makes me laugh, and the original Jaws is a cinematic classic no one should have touched in the first place. That’s not to say Jaws: The Revenge is without merit. The script’s dialogue is smart and the “Kokomo” island paradise in the film gives us something new to look at. And there’s Gray’s astounding performance as Ellen.
The monster in Jaws: The Revenge negates a lot of the psychological horror it’s trying to pull off, and the psychological horror is so thick that the monster is rendered useless. Then there’s the romantic Boomer plotline better suited for Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun. If there was such thing as Emotional Horror, Jaws: The Revenge would be top of the heap. If this were a review for a melodrama, it would get a vote of four stars, but that’s not why we’re here today. As a horror movie, it is inept and practically bloodless. For that, it must swim with the fishes.
GENRES: Diverse Characters. Feminist-Friendly, Monster/Creature, Psychological, What the Fuck Was That
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