Doll Shark (2022)

I have a weakness for shark movies. And there are a lot of them out there. While there are a few good ones (Jaws, obviously, and Open Water, The Shallows, The Reef) and some incredibly enjoyable ones (The Meg, Sharknado, Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus), most of them are just bad. But I still love them. Well, most of them. Doll Shark has a few good things going for it, but it is undeniably a bad movie. It begins with a man determined to hunt some special shark. Does he do this in a boat? Nope. He stands on what seems to be a pier, and just leans down and spears the shark, all while the worst rain effect ever seen in a movie plays over the image. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that rain effect? Anyway, the guy takes a tooth from the shark, then purchases a plush shark toy for his son, and shoves the tooth inside it for some reason. I guess it is to make the toy a little more dangerous. But what it does is… I don’t know... makes the spirit of the shark inhabit the toy? Something like that.

The boy is excited to have the toy. His favorite television program is a shark show that apparently plays constantly on some bizarre network. The show, however, seems to be only fifteen or twenty seconds long, because every time he starts to watch it, it is the same short sequence that he sees. It’s a sequence which we would think would be the show’s introduction, but seems to be the entire fucking show. Very strange. Although finally at one point later in the film, we see a clown, which might be part of that show. A clown whose script is in front of him and slightly to his right. Just watch his eyes. What the boy is not excited about is his babysitter. Now, look, if you write a part for a 17-year-old and you can’t find a 17-year-old, it might be best to rewrite the part. But that is not what the makers of this film did. They just went ahead with a woman who is clearly forty playing the part as written. That’s right, a 40-year-old babysitter. A 40-year-old babysitter who hates children and is using the babysitting opportunity to invite her friend and some boys over. I’m not kidding. And this isn’t a one-time thing. This woman is the kid’s regular babysitter. So this is her fucking job. Babysitting. She’s forty.

She does have a car, so maybe she charges a lot for her services. She is the only character in the entire movie who has a car, so I guess everyone else in this town is even more of a loser than she is. (The mother’s boyfriend has a car, but he’s only there for a moment and I don’t recall him having any lines.) Well, this babysitter makes fun of the child she’s babysitting, even takes his plush toy and puts it on top of the trash bin (not in it, just sets it on top of it), and even drugs him to make him sleep though a good portion of the film. You might want to also sleep through a good portion of it. I couldn’t fault you for that. Anyway, the plush shark comes alive and first kills a couple of neighbors. Well, actually, it seems that only one of the victims lived there, and the other was a guy she picked up. There’s an unfortunate scene where the neighbor tries to seduce the man by taking off part of her bathing suit in the pool. This is the most horrifying moment of the movie. “Please keep your clothes on,” you will shout at the screen. The plush shark also attacks the babysitter, her ridiculous friend, and the two boys that are coming over to score with them. And a burglar. The burglar bit is actually funny, because of the items he takes. He grabs a cordless phone, but not the phone’s base. He grabs a single letter from a drawer of papers. He grabs one specific DVD from the shelf of movies. Who is this guy? By the way, this is apparently the house to enter without permission. A total of four characters break into the house (five, if you count the cop, who does not announce himself as he enters). Meanwhile, the child sleeps on. The child, by the way, gives the best performance of the movie. He’s really not bad at all, even when he’s awake.

The worst performance of the movie? That’s a tough one, because there are a lot of people in the running, including the drunk mother who has no relationship with her son whatsoever. But I would have to go with the child’s father, who really loves talking to himself. He does try to talk to someone else at one point. He calls his son, but there is no answer. This alarms him. Why? It is unclear. He doesn’t know anything about his ex-wife having left the boy with a 40-year-old babysitter, or about the murders next door, but maybe this is the first time he has called home and no one has answered. Oh, that reminds me. That phone the burglar took? We see it ringing in this scene. So that means that the plush shark, after killing the burglar, took the phone out of his bag and placed it back where it belongs. I imagine it did that with the DVD, letter and other items as well. Anyway, there is a cop who is completely unbelievable and also pretty fucking bad at his job, who is trying to track the murderer of the neighbors. But it is the father, who, because of his bad feeling, takes a week off from his job to rescue his son. Why a week? Well, it probably takes him that long to walk there. He shows up in the boy’s bedroom and spears the plush shark. And that’s when the boy wakes up. Of course, he should be like, “Why the fuck are you destroying my toy?” After all, he has slept through all the death and whatnot, and has absolutely no idea that the plush toy is possessed or alive or whatever. But he is just happy that he has one parent there, a parent who is not drunk. So, a happy ending.

What is good about this movie? Well, I love the look of the plush shark when it turns from a regular plush toy to a blood-thirsty killer. Seriously, it’s wonderful. And that goes a long way. There are some good, funny shots with the shark. And, as I said, the boy gives a decent performance. That’s about it. While this is not a good movie, it is definitely not the worst shark movie I’ve seen. Oh no, not even close.