
I have said it before and I will say it again Of all the genres of films, horror has to be the toughest to make great even with a considerable budget. More often than not there will always be a lower-echelon director who tries to make headway into this genre with what in his view is “something different” because once you stumble upon something appealing to the masses, a large profit is guaranteed similar to what Blair Witch managed to do many years ago with its exceptionally horrendous nauseating shaky camera work that I must admit I absolutely detest but people embared into theatres for like never before.
With Bad Fish, they were trying to do something identical and although they succeeded in a few areas due to a limited budget, the end product isn’t great. But what have they done that should have been avoided and which affected the final output?
The movie starts, which I actually enjoy, the introduction of a series of subsequent events with a scene that shows a pregnant woman going to some beautiful beaches then going into the water and after that screaming. She, however, does appear to be panicking, but it is unclear whether something is pursuing her or whether it is something else that has made her agitated. She kneels in shallow water and begins to screech, thanks to the score covering this part of the film quite well. Then we are sent back (although the film does not mention this point) to an unnamed time, to see these geographical conditions in the beginning scenes of the opening credits of the film where a town is by the sea. Then some credits are played to a soundtrack which seems much more expensive than the resources they possessed. That did quite impress me and at this point in a low-budget production is, so far, so good.
I don’t want to reveal too much about why I detracted from the film’s rating since for horror enthusiasts who love B-grade films this film may be something they would look forward to. Yes, it is something a bit different and yes, it does have some good elements to it but they really miss the mark in one of the most important parts of a gore-oriented horror film in that the death scenes and the scenes where the puppeteer monster is actually finally revealed to us are really poorly executed and it makes me question exactly how small their budget was.
The film made me believe there are places where the money was spent wisely but if there’s anything low-budget horror flicks have taught me, it is that even the most horrendous of horror films with awful actors, usually have the complete blood and guts and this will at the most be awesome in the end. Why these have chosen this part and done it so badly, is something that I find rather interesting.
The plot behind this story is that there’s a town which is coastal and the lives of its people depend on the fishing season. Yet, the town’s people haven’t got any fish and this is concerning for them. An even more unfortunate incident occurs when a sailor comes back from the ocean and shouts into a radio to the sheriff that two of his crew members were abducted from the ship and killed. It’s a little weird because when the cops get there the captain is inebriated and has blood on his clothes and even the boat is soaked in blood. Unsurprisingly, Sauzy lies accusing him that he is drunk and hurting, and arrests him. Later as the captain is exonerated which is not shown in a good way, he gets back to the situation of the absence of fish and they send for a biologist called John whom they hope will elucidate the different aspects surrounding the process.
Jonny Lee plays John and while it should surprise no one that we have never heard of this guy, he does a pretty decent job in a film that almost certainly had very little money to pay him for the role. The other actors in the story are also quite good even most of the extras which is something that I always find refreshing and surprising in pictures of this kind. There are some problems with the sets and the script which has enormous gaps in it and elements that just seem to have a role of padding to get this one to ninety minutes. For example: John is in pursuit of some captain who went through similar bad luck like the said captain who lost his crew at the sea, and the local people inform him that this particular captain can be found in a certain bar somewhere in the town. These and other townspeople tell John that this bar is a really bad place and that quite a number of fights begin at this place.
When John enters the bar without thinking twice, contrary to the suggestions given to him, it is not an unreasonable or rough place, and all the people sitting there are very good-natured. The bar is sanitized and does not at all fit the description of the sort of establishment that the respondents in the reconnaissance would classify as being a dive-type bar, the patrons of which should come as a warning. This may seem like a small thing, but in the story, this bar was often depicted as a thorn in the community’s side, when we finally get to it, it’s actually not bad, and the fact that John had already haphazardly walked into this bar in the earlier parts of this story makes it even more difficult for me to comprehend why they bothered to throw this in the first place.
They probably thought to themselves “Oh snap! We had some characters tell the viewers in the beginning that this bar is a really dark place, but it doesn’t feel dark at all somehow.” And then, when it is no longer relevant, they reach a point of introducing John revisiting that bar, which is quite unnecessary in the first place because he gets in one of the most ridiculous brawls I have ever encountered in any film. There seems to be an effort in trying to fit this in because the script had a few gaping holes that required addressing and this was one of them. It is quite comical, I guess, but it just makes them look foolish.
Another one of the issues that I would like to address is that the audience has to accept one of the key characters particularly a resident of the Oregon fishing town named Abby played by a woman we know as Abby (what is this madness?) and she is meant, in the story, to be tremendously gorgeous but this actress is not really beautiful enough to be cast for such a role. I remember me and my friend were wondering why Abby and I were so ugly while we watched a film and then started conversing where exactly “she is not that hot”. Come on, neither of us is looking for a modeling contract in a magazine but in a certain film we wouldn’t be called very attractive either. She’s just this average middle-aged woman to me. Sorry, Abby, you are quite a veteran of the industry but 6 out of 10 is probably generous. If the actress is described in the screenplay as someone who is ‘the most beautiful’, then something is terribly wrong with the casting, if there even was one. We are terribly sorry for such crude language but sometimes, people have to call a spade a spade.
I do want to point out that there is one particular scene that is done extremely well and I wonder why the director was not informed about it during the filming and why they did not employ this tactic more in the film. In one scene the assistant to John the marine biologist is going for a run on the beach. At this time in the movie, we do not clearly know what the evil is that has been brought into the movie and while the woman is jogging on the beach with headphones cut on, we notice something that is rather unclear and concealed behind her and is indicative of progress. They change the camera position quite often, but every time we get a close-up of the faces, it’s the runners, and the background of the faces has something moving closer. This scene of creeping death is marvelously captured and so brilliant that it makes the audience feel a sense of dread when they see it. It’s quite apparent that “whatever that is” would join her at some point, however, one has to be satisfied with the blurry image of whatever it is.
This was well executed and I must say that this clip is more than worth watching for. If however, they used this movie technique much more frequently than they did, this film in my estimation would have gone up a lot.
Unfortunately, however, most of the movie is just bad and when we finally do get the big reveal as to what the evil is, it is rather absurd that nobody in the entire town would have known what the problem is and if it is a problem many of the people in this town seemed to have known what the problem was. The poor sheriff keeps on calling everyone a drunk loser but I don’t know maybe that is a genuine issue in this town who knows!
To be brutally honest, probably not. Now that I have viewed the trailer I observe that the one scene that received a lot of praise from me well almost all of it is in the trailer so yes it is possible that they knew the brilliance of the particular part of the picture. A lot in my view, is also revealed in that trailer, about the plot which should not have been revealed.
There is really no need to watch this, and I believe the internet community has come to the same conclusion since the IMDB rating is 3.3/10. The only way this should be ignored is the fact that a director underrated himself with just about a shoestring budget and actors that are above average given the limited finances they were working with. For many, this film is a failure as it does not depict anything scary or novel enough to be considered entertaining in any shape or form. This would only be for those who appreciate horror films made with no budget and bashed the details to the point they are almost good.
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