Just when you thought it was safe to go back to movies about going back into the water, Australia unleashes Chum upon the world. It’s a low-budget, schlocky attempt at a shark horror movie, notably being released by IFC without the cooperation of Shudder, the branch of the company that specifically handles this sort of thing. They didn’t even want it. Shudder probably heard this thing was coming down the pipeline and dodged it, which says a lot considering some of the highly questionable content they’ve already released. Even then, most of their catalog is better than this. Reasonably, most movies are better than this.
Chum is easily one of the worst things I’ve seen all year. It barely functions as a cohesive piece of entertainment that can sustain its 90-minute runtime. The plot is about as basic as shark movies come. We follow a recently married couple, Tina, played by Alice Eve, whose career has apparently come to this, and Tom, who is wrapped up in a strange marital conflict that has absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever. After the wedding and a heartfelt toast from Tina’s father, they head out on a boat trip with friends for what is supposed to be a relaxing excursion.
Unfortunately, there’s something lurking in the deep blue sea. That something is a very angry, very determined, and very obviously CGI shark. The shark pursues their boat with such relentless determination that it almost becomes cartoonish. Before long, the boat capsizes and the survivors require rescue from a local fisherman who just so happens to be passing by.
Why is he passing by, you ask? Because he’s a kindly gentleman with absolutely nothing suspicious about him. Oh God, he’s the villain, isn’t he? Of course he’s the villain.
After rescuing everyone, he welcomes his guests aboard with food and drinks from what appears to be a fully stocked refrigerator. Apparently, when you’re a lone fisherman, it’s important to keep enough refreshments on hand in case you happen to rescue a group of stranded vacationers that you intend to use as shark bait. Because that’s the plan.
Our resident Captain Ron has spent years trying to kill this particular shark after it killed his wife, girlfriend, or somebody important enough to motivate this entire revenge scheme. His brilliant strategy involves using the survivors as bait while placing them inside shark cages/. Ironically, the shark cages are probably the safest place in the entire movie.
Unfortunately, our victims are far too stupid to realize this. They inevitably try to escape, which naturally lands them in the water where they are significantly less protected from the giant shark than they were inside the shark cage specifically designed to protect them from giant sharks. What follows is a series of increasingly ridiculous attacks. This shark doesn’t simply drag people underwater like Bruce in Jaws. No, this shark attacks with the enthusiasm of a kid tearing into presents on Christmas morning. Limbs fly, blood sprays, and at one point I swear I heard the shark growl.
Also, our Captain My Captain is a terrible shot. This man is armed to the teeth with harpoon guns, but he couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn. I lost count at how many times he tried to shoot the shark, but he would have likely stood a better chance with a Bowie knife and just making himself bait.
The acting across the board feels like something you’d stumble across while wandering through a video store twenty years ago. It’s the kind of movie where you stop, stare at the box art, and ask yourself, “What is this? Who are these people? Why don’t I recognize any of them? Wasn’t one of them in Transmorphers?”Yet somehow, this actually received a theatrical release through IFC.
I also watched the Audio Eyes audio-described version. The track is written by Micah Grossman and narrated by Sean Boggs. Sean makes some choices that felt a little too performative even for my tastes, and I generally enjoy expressive audio description. There are moments where he sounds personally devastated by the fate of characters being eaten by sharks. The problem is that Chum doesn’t need more sadness. It needs more tension. I know that AD teams give 100% no matter the project, so I get that Sean believes this is what works, but for someone with a lighter voice, if he’s going to do films like Chum, we’d all be better off if he could darken the tone. Even if I accepted this film as a work of art, I would define it as a horror, thriller, or survival genre, not really the kind of film where emotive description reacts this way. Let’s face it. This audience came to see Chum assuming people would die. These deaths aren’t tragic, they are necessary for the genre.
Nothing about this movie is scary. Chum is where shark movies go to die. It’s debatably worse than Jaws: The Revenge, which is honestly an impressive accomplishment. It ranks among the worst shark movies I’ve ever seen because even its one attempt at originality, the revenge-driven fisherman feeding people to sharks, has already been done better. In fact, it was done better just last year. Dangerous Animals, another Australian thriller distributed by IFC and supported by Shudder, explored a remarkably similar concept and featured what may be Jai Courtney’s best performance to date. That movie understood how to build suspense, create memorable characters, and make its central threat genuinely unsettling. Chum understands none of those things. That comparison hurts this movie even more because it highlights exactly how much better this concept can be in the hands of filmmakers who know what they’re doing. Like so many shark movies before it, Chum desperately wants to be Jaws. Like so many shark movies before it, it never comes close.
If you can skip Chum, you absolutely should. The only thing in the water here isn’t worth saving.
Rotten: 2.1/10
