Every shark movie made since 1975 exists in the shadow of “Jaws.”
No exceptions.
It may explain the crush of cartoonishly bad shark thrillers over the past 20 years. If you can’t lap Steven Spielberg’s vision, why try? Some still do, though, like the creative team behind “The Black Demon.”
The Josh Lucas thriller deserves some credit. Not only is the setting fresh, the screenplay suggests killer sharks are less evil than corporate drones. That’s a familiar theme of many zombie films but less common on the shark front.
Sadly, neither twist elevates “The Black Demon” beyond a streaming time waster at best.
Lucas stars as Paul, a safety inspector for Nixon Oil (subtle!) who takes his family to Mexico to visit an off-shore oil rig. Something seems off from the start....