Chum Review – Alice Eve’s Shark Movie Is Exactly What You’d Expect

Given the vivid poster showcasing a close-up look of a killer shark and a trailer leaning heavily on the seemingly so-bad-it’s-good territory, I was hoping that Chum would be thrilling B-movie fun. But right from the start, something is off as Jonathan Zuck, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Leone, chooses to open his movie with a bleak yet clinical voiceover from Roy (Jim Klock), whose beloved wife has tragically died after a shark attack while swimming in the sea.

The opening prologue suggests an ominous tone, only for Zuck to shift his focus to the estranged relationship drama between Tina (Alice Eve) and her husband, Tom (Eric Michael Cole), during a destination wedding in Malta. The two don’t seem to get along well. Then, the following day, their friends – Rachinda (Sarah Siadat), Rick (Johnny Gaffney) and Britney (Lisa Yard) – and Tina’s sister, Sadie (Elle Haymond), convince the newlywed couple to have fun at sea on a boat ride. Tina, who can’t swim, chooses to sunbathe on the boat deck, while Tom and the rest are enjoying themselves in the water.

The story gradually reveals what goes wrong in Tina and Tom’s rocky relationship. Adding such drama is meant to elevate narrative tension, particularly the emotional conflicts, making their subsequent encounter with the shark feel palpable. But the execution tells a different story, beginning with the lackluster on-screen dynamic between Eve’s Tina and Cole’s Tom. Eve tries her best to play a conflicted lead character who is trying to salvage her marriage, but most of the time, her acting comes across as tonally awkward.

It doesn’t help either that the dialogue ends up sounding unnaturally stiff, and more so when these characters interact with each other as if they are forcefully read their lines from the cue cards. The one actress who bothers me the most is Elle Haymond, whose character’s penchant for speaking out her mind in front of Tina sounds rather robotic. It makes me wonder whether it’s intentional or it’s just plain bad acting, to begin with.

Zuck then ratchets up the stakes after the shark appears, and it doesn’t take long before a casualty happens. He doesn’t shy away from the graphic violence associated with the shark attack, and while I appreciate that Zuck is going for a mix of practical and VFX shots, his overreliance on showing the shark instead of building a harrowing sense of dread and the less-is-more approach proves to be a grave mistake. This is especially true when a shark movie like Chum doesn’t carry the kind of sizable Hollywood budget seen in the likes of Deep Blue Sea — or even make the most of its constraints the way other low-budget shark films have. The special effects look like an AI slop, particularly when it reveals the shark in close-up, and this even extends to the blood-soaked seawater in some scenes. If only Zuck had taken the visual cue from Steven Spielberg’s seminal Jaws, he would have at least offset the obvious budgetary constraints by leveraging his movie through forbidding sound design and psychological terror.

Back to the story, Zuck soon reintroduces Roy, where the latter save them and brings them aboard his boat. From here, it’s a Dangerous Animals-style vibe, but instead of framing Roy as a sadistic serial killer who loves to watch his victims getting mauled by sharks, he’s more of a vengeful and grief-stricken Captain Ahab-like antagonist. He’s looking to use them as bait to lure the shark so he can kill it.

The second half of Chum is pretty much a survival thriller, alternating between Tina and the rest trying to outsmart the unhinged Roy and prevent themselves from becoming fish food with the shark waiting underwater. Too bad the thrills feel largely generic, even with the occasional blood and gore.

Chum may have run at a shorter-than-expected 87 minutes, but it sure feels agonizingly longer than I thought. I barely care who survives or gets eaten by the shark, and as if it isn’t enough, Zuck throws in an out-of-place commentary surrounding climate change to justify the shark’s unusually aggressive behavioral patterns for human flesh. It’s clear that Zuck and Leone have plenty of ideas in their minds, and I’m okay if they incorporate them altogether in a single movie as long as these mix-and-match ideas keep me intrigued throughout the movie.

For a shark movie that actually knows what it wants to be, Netflix’s Thrash is worth your time.