One of the most psychotically incongruous movies you’ll ever see. On the one hand you have all these earnest scenes about real-world stuff—a woman mourning the death of her son while also beginning a new romance, her other son doubtful about this relationship while having communication problems with his own wife, not to mention professional pressures—and on the other hand you have the absurd idea that this family is somehow being hunted by a shark from New England to the Bahamas … and meanwhile the woman magically intuits this and is looking over her shoulder every time she comes near a beach.

On the ridiculous end of the scale there’s also the moment when the woman’s granddaughter only narrowly escapes getting eaten by the shark, so the woman jumps on a boat by herself and storms out into the ocean to confront her nemesis. Lady, what is your plan?? Are you going to yell at it in your mom voice? Are you going to throw your shoe at it? How are you going to find it in the ATLANTIC OCEAN?

As if all that weren’t enough, a lot of the dialogue is just plain bickering. Your radio transmitter’s not working! No, you just don’t know how to use a radio transmitter properly! It was only the shark in the water that kept the rest of the crew from jumping overboard and swimming to shore.

The most tragic part of it all is that it’s not even that campy, so you can’t laugh at it much … except for when the flabby, goggle-eyed shark puppet comes lurching out of the water. That’s a little funny.