In the same way that no good can come of trying to overlook safety measures to maintain the operational viability of an oil rig in Baja, which is an idea at the heart of this film, no good can come of actually watching The Black Demon. Its a film that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a standard shark movie, an environmentally-conscious thriller, or a film about a curse, with that curse happening to take the form of a shark, and it ends up failing to be any of those things.
Josh Lucas plays the main character, Paul, who is tasked with visiting the aforementioned oil rig and shutting it down. He takes his family with him, a chance for them to get some sunshine and feel more heat off the threatening glances from some angry locals, and everyone eventually ends up on a rig that is being targeted by a big angry shark. If you watch this and figure out a way to care about any of the characters then please let me know.
Director Adrian Grunberg has done a couple of good movies in the past (starting his career as a feature director with the very enjoyable Get The Gringo AKA How I Spent My Summer Vacation). You wouldn’t know it from watching this. While there is a basic degree of technical competence on display, I guess, Grunberg seems content to work with a weak script that is in dire need of people ready to elevate the material. I was unsurprised to find that this was the feature writing debut of Boise Esquerra, working from a story idea by Carlos Cisco. Esquerra seems unsure of what to do, throwing in a number of different plot elements that sit uncomfortably alongside each other like family members who despise one another respectfully attending a funeral service together. There are glances, some shuffling, but no outbursts. The whole thing just feels awkward though, and everyone is relieved when it’s over.
The cast doesn’t help. There are other main people involved, but it mostly rests of the shoulders of Josh Lucas. As much as I don’t mind Lucas, he seems to have built his career on accepting every role handed to him by an agent who hates him. The fact that he cannot do anything to help make this a more bearable film is perhaps a testament to why he has never hit any dizzying heights. He is generally capable, if not overly charismatic, but this is a performance as weak as the script. It’s as if he got to the location and fully realised what film he was making. Fernanda Urrejola plays his wife, she is also not very good (hampered by the script treating her even worse), there are a couple of so-so younger actors as their children, and the only other person I want to namecheck is Julio Cesar Cedillo, the one bright spot in the film, playing a man already on the rig and already well aware of the uncanny abilities of a shark that won’t let people get back to the mainland.
There’s nothing more to say. This has a poor opening sequence, something trying to be tense and atmospheric that fails completely, a dull middle section, full of laughably cliché moments, and a finale that I wanted over and done with as quickly as possible, because I just wanted the thing to end. It makes the mistake of treating the sillier plot elements with seriousness and treating the serious elements with an overdone earnestness that simply doesn’t work. AND the shark is disappointing, not bad enough to be hilarious and not good enough to be impressive and memorable. Others might be more forgiving of this, especially when compared to the hundreds of dire shark movies out there, but this should have been much better than it is. It had the potential to be decent, which makes the disappointing end result all the more infuriating.
3/10
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