For all its naff reputation, maybe Deep Blue Sea said it best: sharks really are “God’s oldest killers”. Many filmmakers have taken that idea as gospel, from Spielberg to Turtletaub, Anderson (Wes) to Wheatley (Ben), taking great glee in putting their characters in harm’s way via a ginormous aquatic beastie. Yet shark attack movies always run the risk of being well-worn, and are tied more often than not to one setting: open water. Those who dare to dream with their jawsome B-pictures branch out to stranger climbs, often to mixed success. Tornados were a fun gimmick; who can rightly criticise the much-memed Sharknado franchise when audiences kept coming back five times after the first one? We’ve also had House Shark, Land Sharks, Sand Sharks, Sky Sharks, even Avalanche Sharks, but there has never been a killer shark found in a spa…until now. Yes, that’s right, one by the name of Morihito Inoue has been brave enough to take sharks into water that you really, really thought was safe in his brilliantly imaginative Hotspring Sharkattack, which truly does go above and beyond in stretching the shark genre to its very limits… and then some.
Dubbed the ‘Monaco of the East’, the coastal Atsumi City is up-and-coming for the vacation scene. The jewel in its crown is its onsen, a luxury spa where holiday-goers can kick back and relax in its soothing purifying waters. It’s the last place you would expect to be chomped in half by the predators of the oceans… AND YET. The bathtime slayings are getting more and more frequent, much to the interest of shark scholar Dr Mayumi Kose (Yuu Nakanishi), and the concern of the city’s young upstart mayor (Takuya Fujimura), echoing inverted versions of classic characters from Jaws. But once the reluctant team realise the sharks can get anywhere due to some extremely flexible bones, not even playgrounds are safe, with sharks leaping up out of puddles and other harmless water sources to chow down on the population at large. It’s down to this mismatched pair (plus silent and superhuman lifeguard Macho, played with authentic stoicism by Sumiya Shiina) to cook up a madcap plan to end these pesky oversized vermin once and for all, and get Atsumi City back up to its regal reputation.
It would be a shame if Hotspring Sharkattack took itself seriously for a single second. Thankfully, the thought never crosses its mind. Fully self-aware and operating at maximum eccentricity, this ultra low-budget tokusatsu riff on Jaws cares not for limitations of story or spectacle, constantly going hell-for-leather between hysterically ropey shark-related deaths and world-saving plans that even Thunderbirds’ Tracy family might find far-fetched. A huge 3D printer capable of creating entire city blocks and high-tech submarines fuels much of the plot, shot marvellously as a miniature that could hold a candle to the heyday of Godzilla or Gamera. It’s this resourceful, silly spirit that launches Inoue’s film into entertainingly choppy waters, hitting budgetary sea mines at every turn and still chugging forward with innovation and enthusiasm.
It would be a shame if Hotspring Sharkattack took itself seriously for a single second. Thankfully, the thought never crosses its mind.
The fact that it is comfortably a game of two halves enhances its energy. The first movement shares DNA with Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla, taking an amusingly dry look at just how scientists and city hall would work together through red tape and inexplicable sci-fi nonsense to save the day, intercut with abrupt, absurd deaths in three feet of shallow water. This gives way to a barmy back half where Inoue rolls out the green screen, taking the action under the sea towards a finale that resembles Hundreds of Beavers far more than it does Stingray. Hotspring Sharkattack creates its own silly visual language where it makes total sense for a brooding muscle-man turns into a human torpedo to boff a kaiju-sized shark on the nose, and when that’s the entire experience of the last stretch, things just click into place and any preconceptions about rubbish VFX magically fall away into the abyss at the bottom of the ocean.
It can sometimes be a tough ask for something as deliberately daft as this to actually land some laughs, yet Hotspring Sharkattack transcends its overt silliness and becomes an affectionate love-letter, not only to shark movies of yore, but to the act of making a film because you can. When Inoue can sustain that broad a joke for 79 whole minutes, there is little excuse for any budding filmmakers not to be going out there and finding any which way to make their stupid visions come to life too. You’d suspect that something called Hotspring Sharkattack could never be a call to arms for those with an indie spirit, and yet here we are, yucking and yacking alongside it, warts and all.
Hotspring Sharkattack is available to rent or own on Cable VOD and Digital HD, including Apple TV, Prime Video, Fandango at Home, iNDEMAND and Vubiquity.
