Released: July 17, 1987. Directed by: Joseph Sargent. Starring: Lorraine Gary, Michael Caine, Lance Guest. Runtime: 1h 29 min.
In the franchise’s timeline, Jaws: The Revenge takes place after Jaws 2 and completely ignores the events of Jaws 3-D. This is helpful to know that it ignores the events of the third film – since Sean’s no longer afraid of the water and he’s a deputy on Amity Island now.
Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) is now a widow after Chief Brody died of a heart attack (Ellen thinks it was the fear of sharks that killed him). The film kicks off with her youngest son Sean (Mitchell Anderson) getting killed by a shark a few days before Christmas. Enjoy this poorly edited attack, it’s the only one for awhile.
It’s funny that the film’s set during Christmas time. We can tell it’s Christmas as Sean’s death scene is accompanied with carolers singing on the island. In case you’ve forgotten by the 30-minute mark, Ellen and Michael have a conversation outside while the other characters sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” in the background.
The terrible script entirely forgets about that Sean was getting married and we hardly see her at all after his death. After his death, her eldest son Michael (Lance Guest) comes to town wife his wife Carla (Karen Young) and their daughter Thea (the late Judith Barsi). They invite Ellen to stay with them in The Bahamas over Christmas. The water’s too warm for sharks, so it’ll be fine.
You see, Ellen believes that Great White sharks are out to get the Brody family. She’s wholly convinced a shark killed Sean out of vengeance, so The Bahamas’ warm waters won’t keep the Great White Revenge Shark away. Since the sharks from the first two films were defeated, they must have told their friends during their Brody feuds that if they were ever blown up, that bastard Brody did it. The shark only cares about Brody flesh, so there aren’t many shark attacks in a shark attack movie. In fact, there are two dream sequences and only one actual shark attack in the film’s first hour. Ouch.
The premise of a revenge shark is also so silly. Revenge sharks don’t make any sense. Though, the film’s lack of explanation is better than the one in the film’s novelization where a witch doctor puts a curse on the shark to do his bidding and get revenge on the Brody’s. I much prefer imagining a group of Great White sharks meeting and showing each other pictures of people that they hate the most, and Public Enemy No. 1 is the Brody family.
Ellen confides this mania in local pilot Hoagie, played by Michael Caine in one his paycheck pictures (he got $1.5 million for a week of filming). He acts circles around everyone without really trying. It’s a dull romance between Ellen and Hoagie, because Ellen’s simply boring. She works in the first two films as a supporting character but can’t carry a film to save her own life.
She’s adamant her family not go near the water, which is hard when Michael is a marine biologist. He’s not a smart character as he decides to study the shark with Jake (Mario Van Peebles) and not tell anyone about it. Yay, secrecy.
There’s one okay scene as Michael escapes the Great Rubber Shark through a sunken ship, but that’s it for anything close to good. The script’s just ludicrous, but the film’s more memorably bad than Jaws 3-D. Speaking of Jaws 3-D, the only aspect better than it is the cinematography (especially the underwater scenes), because at least we can tell what’s happening.
The dialogue is what is memorably bad at times. Carla gets mad at Michael about not taking out the trash. She then takes out a blowtorch to work on her beach sculpture and Michael says, “I’ve always wanted to make love to an angry welder. I’ve dreamed of nothing else since I was a small boy.” That, my friends, is romance.
Spoiler alert for the last three paragraphs, so if you don’t want to read about the stupidity of the ending, thanks for reading. Still here? Cool.
The plot’s still ridiculous. The finale wouldn’t happen if Ellen didn’t recklessly go after the shark. She thinks if she lets the shark kill her, it’ll leave the family alone. It’s hilarious and delusional. The ending doesn’t make sense, either, as Jake puts an electrical pulse device down the shark’s throat and Michael uses a flashlight connected to it to make the beast literally roar in pain, which is hilarious. Ellen’s determined to kill the shark and remembers Sean getting eaten (though she could not see it) and recalls Chief Brody’s victory over the shark in Jaws, even though she did not see this.
While going to kill the shark, there’s dramatic zooms on Ellen’s face, then on Martin Brody’s in archive footage, and then the “smile you son of a bitch” line is replayed. Ellen jabs the shark with a stick and the shark spontaneously explodes. The shark looks like clay here and we can’t even tell what happens because of the bad editing. It’s basically the ending to all the Jaws films and the writer (Michael De Guzman) is like, “okay, let’s poke the shark with a stick and he’ll blow up… Because science.”
That’s a main problem with Jaws: The Revenge, it’s just a highlight reel of the first film. There’s even a similar scene to the first film where Michael gets mimicked by Thea. The filmmakers reusing footage from the first film to frame the ending around is just lazy filmmaking.
Score: 12/100
The writing’s not great, either. There’s a moment where one of the teens is parasailing and the shark stalks underneath. I was getting annoyed waiting for the shark to eat him. The character turned out to be Mike and since the film didn’t establish that well, I ended up being annoyed by the scene rather than feeling the suspense that should have been there if we knew it was Mike.
I just love how the trio think they’re being the hunters going out to take down the shark and then it turns the tables on them.