Narco Sharks (Narco Shark 2) is kinda like Zappa’s thing of genius tunes with grade-school humor lyrics, just replacing music with wacko CGI sharks. With that being said, you can imagine what happens when the promised CGI sharks dry up and are absent for most of the movie. Zappa did a few albums that were all music and no lyrics, but he wouldn’t dare release a record with no music and just bathroom gags. Filmmaker Preciado did, which is unfortunate. I do appreciate the homages to the VHS era.
Preciado loves 80s cheese so much that his fingerprints on the film are permanently coated orange. And for a while, Narco Sharks (Narco Shark 2) is able to maintain a “so bad it is good” feel when the sharks are out. I could watch a whole movie filled with those mutant sharks. For whatever reason, this is not that movie. Preciado teases the audience with wonderfully terrible shark effects and then spends the majority of the movie depriving them. By taking the bad shark effects out early on, the whole thing runs out of gas before the halfway mark.
Still image of Sister Panda, the deranged nun character, from Narco Sharks (Narco Shark 2). Courtesy of Gerardo Preciado.
“By taking the bad shark effects out early on, the whole thing runs out of gas before the halfway mark.”
For all the talk about giving the people what they want, the director seems to forget what the whole point is, which is the sharks. By the time the big finale arrived, I didn’t care and just wanted it to end, as I had been put through enough fart storms. Too many times, Preciado crosses the line from entertainment into bombardment. If this were purely an experimental feature, maybe that could be overlooked. However, this is supposed to be a party movie and, as quoted from the worst movie of all time, Up The Academy, “there is a turd in the punchbowl.”
I know the backyard camcorder vibe is on purpose, as there is a lot of analog nostalgia feeding this. It must have been a lot of fun getting together with all your buddies before girls were interested and making gross-out movies. I bet it was also fun forcing your families to sit through them and watch them squirm with both disgust and boredom.
What Preciado needs is to figure out how he can amuse himself to the audience’s benefit instead of their expense. Anything good in Narco Sharks (Narco Shark 2) is paved over with too much self-indulgent snot eating. Even if his whole point is to make a bad review magnet and piss critics off, Preciado can do better.
"…crosses the line from entertainment into bombardment."
