With a shark thriller, what you don’t want is for the movie to open like a Hallmark Channel film. What’s worse is if the first third of the movie runs like that. It’s a bad sign. I was just sitting there, waiting for the shark and trying not to fall asleep.
The film follows Tina [Alice Eve] and her fiancé, who I am going to call Mike (sorry, none of the press assets included character names, and names were not mentioned much in the movie), who are getting married on Malta. The couple are having problems, and a few hours after the wedding, they are ready to divorce. (It turns out Tina is going to be made a partner at her law firm but she will have to take on a drilling company as a client. The same drilling company that Mike worked with Greenpeace to shut down.)
The day after the wedding, the best man takes the married couple and the wedding party on a catamaran trip. Everything is going fine until a shark bumps the ship, causing the captain to go overboard and get eaten. Panic erupts, especially when they discover the radio has been cut. One of the girls grabs a flare, but the shark makes another bump and the flare flies into the engine room, setting the whole thing on fire. So now the group has to jump into the shark-infested water or stay on board and get blown up.
Luckily, a fisherman happens by and scoops them all up. He seems friendly at first, but then he informs them they can’t go back to their resort because of a storm moving in. He gives them a snack, which he has drugged, and this is where his evil plan comes into play. His evil plan is a little over-the-top. Apparently, he wants to put people in his shark dunking cage to lure out a killer shark that killed his wife. This alone seems weak. The shark comes around at least half a dozen times and the fisherman never gets him. He’s been trying for five years to kill this shark. I think he needs a new hobby; this one is clearly not working out for him.
Like I said before, the first third of this movie – and it’s under 90 minutes – feels like a Hallmark movie. Cheesy music, annoying VO, and lots of “emotional” stuff that feels unnecessary with characters we haven’t spent any time with. Then we get to the shark stuff. That was fun, if wholly unrealistic. It is one shark, not several, who violently rips people apart for merely dipping their feet into the water. This shark feels like he has something against the people who breach his ocean.
I will say, the VFX used to create the shark was well done, and the shark leaves lots of little pieces of humans behind. However, it seems unfair. This shark is so aggressive, so violent that it feels really fake and all I could think was how unfair this was to sharks. Luckily, this film won’t get the reach of Jaws so hopefully it won’t be able to spread ugly rumors about how vicious sharks are.
The acting was terrible. All the characters felt like stereotypes. They were cheesy, unrealistic, and all kind of blurred together. The problems the newlywed couple were having never felt fully developed. It felt like they needed something to add more pages to the script.
Ultimately, this is the kind of movie you can put on the background, and only pay attention to during the shark scenes. Don’t worry; you will still get plenty of other stuff done.
Chum hits theaters and VOD/digital platforms on June 5, 2026
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