Let’s see if I got this straight…
Your typical evil drilling corporation’s offshore drilling rig somehow managed to release, from thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface, a…
Fifty foot shark.
Right.
Shouldn’t have used the big drill bit, right?
Now I almost hesitate to note this as this is a Polonia Brothers film. This means we already have several much more difficult questions to answer: for example, what is Mark Polonia doing, making a sequel to a Brett Kelly film? After all, Kelly’s movies seem to exist for no other reason than to point out to us just how much worse a film made for this little money would be if it were made by someone other than Mark Polonia.
And if you didn’t already know, the answer is “a lot worse.”
My second reaction is, boy, I’ve seen a lot of this movie before.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Polonia Brothers’ particular style of guerilla filmmaking, most of their movies are shot primarily in their hometown of Wellsboro, Pa. In a movie like this one, which involves lots of beach scenes, boat scenes and giant shark scenes, these scenes combine footage shot not far from home with a few scenes (not necessarily involving their main characters) shot somewhere else, and a lot of B-roll.
The only problem is that much of their B-roll here has appeared in so many of their films I’m beginning to recognize it. And, come to think of it, that scene with the girl going out for a swim did seem a bit familiar, too.
But, hey, if you’re making a killer shark movie a year at the Tioga reservoir, it is way cheaper recycling all your beach footage than going off to Florida or California every time.
Now the plot is pretty basic — Shark gets loose, kills people, secret agency tries to cover it up. Admittedly, we also have a couple of guys looking for lost paintings (at the bottom of the bay. Hopefully they were oils, not watercolors) and a familiar pair of oil rig workers fighting for survival on a swampy island.
I need to note here that one of them is played by Jeff Kirkendall, a regular in Mark’s films (and, in case you really need to know, the other is played by another regular, James Carolus). Mark once said he liked to cast Jeff Kirkendall because Jeff was the most ordinary person he knew.
I suppose that’s why he usually ends up playing mad scientists.
It seems somehow wrong, though, that this time he is playing a perfectly ordinary oil rig worker.
It’s just so…strange.
I was also a bit surprised to realize that I hadn’t actually seen the original Jurassic Shark (2012). Instead I’d seen another Brett Kelly film, Raiders of the Lost Shark (2015), which also involves a Megalodon eating people.
Not that I feel any need at all to remedy that omission. Those of you who wish to do so are of course welcome to try, but I definitely don’t recommend it. After all, Grade Z film is not something for the weak kneed and faint of heart.
While most of the shark effects are in better than average Polonia Brothers movie CGI, it was no surprise whatsoever that a very familiar shark hand puppet (which has starred in several of these films) made an appearance or two.
Mind you, most of those films were probably better than this one.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ve seen too many of Mark’s films, maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for this one, but Jurassic Shark 2 didn’t seem to be up to their usual standard.
Or perhaps it is because it seems like we’ve seen so much of it before — and in better Polonia Brothers films. Once again, we tour the basements and furnace rooms at Mansfield University, although this time they are supposed to be a drilling rig made of cement blocks, rather than an underwater city made of cement blocks as it was in Virus Shark (2021). Come to think of it, that swamp appeared in Virus Shark, too…
Or maybe it’s just that they’ve made too darn many shark films. Can’t you switch to barracudas for a change?
Or dinosaurs. You haven’t done dinosaurs in a long time.
Heck, I’d even take giant killer chickens.
Just no sharks.
Please.
(Watch for free on Tubi)
rivets on the poster 
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