You don’t have to look too hard to find a giant shark movie these days, with the subgenre spitting out countless new additions on an annual basis, but it is a damned sight more difficult to find a good one. Depending on who you ask, though, The Black Demon either does or doesn’t fit the bill.
Director Adrian Grünberg had already proven he knows his way around a blood-soaked and gratuitously violent escapade after helming Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo: Last Blood, and he puts those talents to suitably use here. Critics weren’t left too enthused as you might imagine, with the aquatic nightmare only managing to scrape together a 25 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
However, the user approval rating is at a markedly superior 65 percent, presumably because the people who track down a shark attack gore-fest don’t have quite the same expectations that critics did. The plot – or what passes as it – finds a family vacation go awry when a megalodon decides that it’s had enough of these human interlopers encroaching on its territory, opting to turn them all into lunch instead.
That is literally all there is to it, but it’s not as if The Black Demon was trying to present itself as an awards season contender or anything. Either way, FlixPatrol has revealed that the B-tier bonanza of flailing limbs and sharpened teeth has swam to the top of the most-watched charts on both iTunes and Google Play this week, because it’s wholeheartedly true that you really can’t keep a giant shark film down for too long.