Even if you think you’ve seen ALL of the shark movies, chances are pretty good that you haven’t yet seen Hot Spring Shark Attack.
Hot Spring Shark Attack is a Japanese film that will open in select theaters on July 11, and will be available to stream on that same day. Now, let’s face it: There are some great shark movies out there, and there are some super cringey ones as well. All signs point to Hot Spring Shark Attack being a solid entry to the shark film library; it even took home the Audience Award at last year’s Tokyo International Shark Film Festival.
On Wednesday, July 9, Hot Spring Shark Attack will make its US debut for special preview showings at numerous Alamo Drafthouse locations. It then opens in markets such as Los Angeles and New York City on Friday, July 11.
Hot Spring Shark Attack will also be available to stream or own on July 11
Writer/Director Morihito Inoue says that shark movies are popular in Japan as well as the US, but his is unique in that it was actually made in Japan, and has had positive word of mouth. He said, “I’m very excited to see how this work will be received outside of Japan.”
Editor-in-Chief of Fangoria Phil Nobile expressed his joyful enthusiasm for the film in today’s Fangoria newsletter after viewing it at Chattanooga Film Festival. He said that as much as he enjoyed many of the offerings at the fest, Hot Spring Shark Attack was “the most purely fun screening” he attended. Nobile described it as “a preposterous, 70-minute, low budget concoction from Japan that didn’t waste one frame of its runtime on anything but entertaining the audience.”
He said the entertainment value had little to do with the film’s low-budget special effects or its flimsy plot. Rather, the audience was enthralled by the obvious love of film-making that was expressed.
In Hot Spring Shark Attack, sharks are able to infiltrate saunas by squeezing in through pipes (they are, after all, mostly comprised of cartilage) and wreaking havoc on a resort town.
Nobile’s description of the audience’s “primal and fundamental joy of cinema” made me think of how I felt when I first watched another delightful Japanese horror film, One Cut of the Dead. Since that’s a movie I recommend to pretty much everyone I know, I look forward to watching Hot Spring Shark Attack as well.