Brooke Hogan

(On Cable TV, September 2013)  With a title like that, what more is there to know?  Yup: sand sharks.  No, it’s not a monster movie that takes itself seriously, even though it’s curiously light on laughs despite everything else.  The limited budget even allows a welcome respite from gore… that is, until a sympathetic character gets an undignified death that plays badly in the middle of what could have been a light-hearted romp.  It’s a basic miscalculation that does much to undo what was until then a low-budget, low-quality but generally enjoyable production. (Heck, until then Sand Sharks was far more enjoyable than Piranha 3D.)  It’s assets like Brooke Hogan’s beach-bunny-playing-a-scientist that occasionally make Sand Sharks more interesting than it has any right to be: her atrocious acting is only matched by the quality of the material she’s given, but it somehow works in an odd way.  Still, don’t expect much more than a routine monster film: Sand Sharks may occasionally show a bit of wit (such as when the protagonists almost hold their breath for a monologuing character to be eaten… which happens a beat later), but it’s sabotaged by a routine script, threadbare production values and not-particularly-charismatic actors.  It’s duller than it should have been, even as a self-aware cheapo creature feature.