Hot Spring Shark Attack [Onsen shâku] (2024) Review

I often wonder what Steven Spielberg really thinks about shark movies. Let’s face it, Jaws is a masterpiece and inspired an ocean full of imitations that have continued to be made from 1975 until today. However, he makes one dinosaur film and no one else wants to touch them, what gives?

Onsen shâku better known to us non-Japanese speakers as Hot Spring Shark Attack is Jaws’s insane descendent featuring as it does a series of gruesome killings, a fine finned fiend on the loose and a tourism obsessed Major desperate to stop anyone knowing what is really going on.

Set in the Monaco of the East, Atsumi in a small town known for its multiple hot springs the Mayor (Takuya Fujimura) is about to build a new sea resort which will bring in plenty of visitors, but is unpopular with the locals. It turns out this is the least of his problems though as a woman’s body appears on the beach mauled and mangled as if by a shark attack but with an hot spring bath locker key.

Keen to keep the press and populace in the dark the Mayor asks the local police to investigate under cover but when marine biologist Dr Mayumi Kose (Yuu Nakanishi) turns up to help she discovers that they are dealing with something unbelievable. Using her skills she deduces that the beast is in fact an ancient Carcharodon Fonce Calidou from the Cainozoic era which went extinct but is somehow now back and out for hot spring seasoned flesh.

Using its primitive soft boneless body to squeeze into and swim down pipes running under ground, it is attracted to heat, popping up anywhere and everywhere from bath tubs to sewers to puddles in the street and pools in play parks and consuming anyone it finds.

Unable to stay under control, once the townsfolk are evacuated its down to the Doctor, the Mayor and a mysterious strong man known only as ‘Macho’ to take the fight to the sea and stop the sharks before there is nothing left.

Gleefully ridiculous and ultra weird, writer and director Morihito Inoue’s directorial debut knows very well how silly it truly is. From the mockumentry moments to the crazy cartoon animations, the influencer massacre and sensationally stupid submarine climx the films tongue remains firmly in its cheek as it parodies everything from the aforementioned Jaws to Anime to giant monster movies and police procedurals.

The cast of the horror comedy which includes One Cut of the Dead’s Takuya Fujimura, Shin Godzilla’s Daniel Aguilar as well as Shôichirô Akaboshi, Masaki Naito, Koichi Makigami, Kiyobumi Kaneko, and Mio Takaki. They all look to be having plenty of fun and this makes the film all the more enjoyable.

With its dodgy effects, oddball characters and barrels of blood, this feels like a long lost Troma movie. It fully leans into the shloky splatter and throwing as much action and madness at its audience as it can in its 1 hour 17 minute run time.

Avoiding the B-movie, straight-to-streaming stink of films like Sharknado and all its ilk, you can see that despite its low budget, Hot Spring Shark Attack is not a cash-in. And the creative team behind it make all the can with what little they have.

From eating sub sandwiches in a submersible, to the kooky Police captain about to retire and searching for a new hobby, to dummy balloons that look like people in swimming gear, to the killer sharks many and mental powers including methane breath, this is a movie that aims to entertain. And most of the time it succeeds.

Not the best shark movie but most definitely not the worst, Hot Spring Shark Attack is a horror comedy that is dumb, fun and full of sharks. And if you are into that sort of thing I am sure you will love it.

Movie Rating:

Hot Spring Shark Attack trailer