''Dinoshark'' is a 2010
low budget
A low-budget film or low-budget movie is a motion picture shot with little to no funding from a major film studio or private investor. Many independent films are made on low budgets, but films made on the mainstream circuit with inexperienced or ...
Syfy
Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. La ...
horror film. It was shown on Syfy on March 13, 2010.
Background
The film premiered on Syfy on the evening of March 13, 2010
before 2 million viewers. ''Dinoshark'' followed up ''
Dinocroc
''Dinocroc'' is a 2004 American horror film directed by Kevin O'Neill. The film's plot revolves around a genetically engineered ''Suchomimus'' terrorizing the lake-side residents of a small town. The film stars Matthew Borlenghi, Jane Longenecke ...
''; Roger Corman proposed a sequel (''Dinocroc 2'') but Syfy felt that television audiences tended to respond better to new-but-similar ideas more than direct sequels.
April MacIntyre, of
Monsters and Critics, compared the film to old
B movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
s.
A sequel titled ''Dinocroc vs. Supergator'' was released on June 26, 2010. Roger Corman said that while the plot is hard to believe, the film can be enjoyed if
belief is suspended and that the film is internally consistent.
The film is a remake of the 1979 film ''
Up from the Depths
''Up From the Depths'' is a 1979 horror film directed by Charles B. Griffith and starring Sam Bottoms, Susanne Reed, Virgil Frye, Kedric Wolfe, and Charles Howerton. The film, along with many other natural horror films at the time of its releas ...
''.
''Dinoshark'' has been described as ''Dinocroc'' with flippers. Before the film was released, Margaret Lyons of ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular ...
'' said that this, along with ''
Sharktopus
''Sharktopus'' is a 2010 SyFy original horror/science fiction film produced by Roger Corman, directed by Declan O'Brien, and starring Eric Roberts. It is the first film in the ''Sharktopus'' franchise.
Plot
Geneticist Nathan Sands and his daught ...
'', were destined to be classics of the "awesomely awful made-for-TV movie genre".
Plot
The film opens with a baby
pliosaur swimming away from a broken chunk of Arctic glacier that