Chum

Chum isn't an impressive shark movie, and unfortunately, it isn't a particularly entertaining bad shark movie either.

The premise has some potential. A man is hunting the shark that killed his wife, and after more conventional bait fails, he starts using people to lure it out. Revenge is an easy enough motive to understand, but the movie doesn't do enough to make his progression believable. There's a considerable distance between obsessively hunting the animal that killed someone you loved and deciding innocent people are expendable bait. Chum needs to spend more time developing the man capable of making that choice.

The other characters aren't much better written. Once they're in danger, their behaviour becomes increasingly frustrating. The characters just seem to run around like idiots making bad decisions but the acting isnt really strong enough to buy that any of them are so panicked to be acting that way. One of the strangest examples comes when they leave the injured boat captain lying at the back of the boat rather than moving him somewhere safer or doing much of anything to help him. They literally jump off the boat, without giving him any thought at all until several minutes later. It's difficult to tell whether we're supposed to read their behaviour as panic or incompetence.

There are smaller problems too. In one particularly noticeable continuity error, characters get into the water and appear completely dry less than five minutes later. Hair, clothes, everything. Details like this aren't enough to ruin a movie on their own, but they add to the feeling that Chum needed another pass before it was finished.

The performances don't give the material much support either. The acting is poor and inconsistent throughout, which makes it harder to buy into characters who already aren't especially well developed.

As for the shark, it's entirely CGI and the quality varies considerably. There are a few shots where it looks surprisingly good. Then there are others where the effects are painfully obvious. Having some genuinely decent shots almost makes the bad ones stand out more because you can see that the movie was capable of better.

Shark movies can get away with a lot. We all know we are signing up to watch a shark eat people. Give me tension, interesting characters, creative kills, a convincing shark, or enough ridiculous fun and I'm willing to forgive quite a bit. Chum never gave me enough of any of them.

They also poorly stuff in some social messaging about the environment and global warming. They did layer it throughout the film so it didn't feel like it was a last minute thought, but it also wasn't very well delivered.

Mostly, I was bored. Don't be afraid to skip this one.