Hot Spring Shark Attack (2024) – Review

Quick Thoughts:

1. It’s the kind of film that features characters eating submarine sandwiches whilst inside a submarine.

2. It’s about ancient sharks that can squish themselves through pipes so they can eat tourists.

3. It features the best shark punching since Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life.

4. It’s very silly.

5. If you’re looking for a random double feature, check out Evil Does Not Exist and Hot Spring Shark Attack. Both of the wildly different films feature important water, tourism, and corporate greed.

6. Writer-director Morihito Inoue has crafted a knowingly silly film that wants to entertain

7. Check out the website for screening information

The nice thing about the 80-minute Hot Spring Shark Attack is that it embraces chaos and wears its silly concept on its sleeve. It’s far from focused, but you can sense that director Morihito Inoue was laser-focused on making sure his crowdfunded film brought the goods. Inoue is a big fan of shark cinema, and his low-budget action comedy delivers an admirable amount of shark action and features the most shark punching you’ll ever witness in a single movie. It also features a helicopter explosion caused by a methane-spewing shark who comes across a tactical unit dubbed the “Anti-Hot Spring Unit,” who don’t realize their bullets will cause a massive explosion (it’s wild). 

Taking place in the Japanese coastal city of Atsumi (The Monaco of the East), the film starts as a Jaws ripoff (in a loving way) by focusing on ancient sharks squishing their cartilage skeletons through pipes to eat spa goers who are enjoying the famous Atsumi hot springs. It then evolves into something akin to Sharknado as the hot water-loving sharks start attacking the denizens of Atsumi. It all culminates with an underwater battle between a buff guy nicknamed “Macho” and a large crown-wearing king shark. 

Drawing inspiration from Jaws and Sharknado, Hot Spring Shark Attack is a lo-fi shark film that is loaded with an incredible amount of energy. On top of everything already mentioned, the movie features Influencer murder, anti-shark submarines, submarine sandwiches, weight-lifting montages, and sharks that require the smallest amount of hot spring water to pop up anywhere (seriously, anywhere). In a standout scene, an industrious shark sets a trap for tourists at the bottom of a playground slide and swallows them whole as they come down it (and it’s great). 

Hot Spring Shark Attack pinballs around at a breakneck pace and feels like a collection of scenes slapped together. With a title like Hot Spring Shark Attack, it’s unfair to expect a focused experience. However, the looseness of the storytelling gives the movie a chaotic vibe, which doesn’t help the overall flow. The result is a loving homage to shark cinema that features knowingly cheeky performances from Daniel Aguilar (Shin Godzilla), Shôichirô Akaboshi, and Takuya Fujimura (One Cut of the Dead).

Final thoughts – I’ve now seen a movie featuring talking sharks squishing themselves through hot spring pipes to eat influencers – and I am very happy.