A Humble and Elegant Review of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Shark” (Contains Mentions of Substance Abuse, Dubious Consent, Insanity/Asylums, Murder, Hallucinations, Desecration of Corpses (Both Sexual and Not), and Religious Imagery)
Well, first off, the poster for the movie very heavily resembles AI “artwork.” Also, based on the trailer, the poster version of Mr. Shark is NOT the one that actually appears in the movie. And this is a nitpick really, but why do a slash in the logo for a movie about a shark-man…? Sharks don’t slash, they bite…
So uh I think this takes place in TEXAS of all places. All the license plates I saw in the movie were Texas ones so…
So we start with Jekyll yelling that his wife isn’t dead while in an asylum. Lovely. We then cut to a very drunk woman stumbling to her car and getting attacked by Mr. Shark.
Then the opening credits which are… surprisingly kinda cool? They’re very intense, but still, kinda cool.
We then go to two bored teens who drive up to Jekyll’s house, smoke some weed, and say “damn that old man scary.”
I had no clue where to put this but I NEED to mention that Jekyll has a painting of what seems to be dead Hitler surrounded by paintings of naked women and then his house is covered in an excessive amount of religious stuff. Like there’s 50 in each room.
Now, Robert Chambers (Who is basically Utterson) decides to have a chat with Jekyll after learning that his mental state has worsened. This information was given to Not-Utterson via Jekyll’s sister-in-law, Samantha. Jekyll decides to inform him of what has occurred around a week ago. He murdered his drug dealer (who was like… very much trying to get into his pants) after she gave him the experimental Sharcopine™️ which turns him into… a shark, idk what you were expecting.
Anyway, remember that drunk lady earlier? He drove her home and had sex with her. She ended up being perfectly fine besides having an insane sex story to tell later. I mean, Mr. Shark reverted back to Jekyll and she kicked him out.
So we go back to a very confused and worried Chambers who does NOT leave and asks Jekyll to continue. He then confesses that once he returned he cut up Barbie’s body and then proceeded to have relations with his wife’s corpse which is very much a skeleton AND HE LICKED HER FUCKING NASAL CAVITY EWEWEWEW.
Chambers still doesn’t fucking leave and is offered another drink (poisoned, by the way). He is then murdered :) Also he buries the bodies and then puts a rock on it.
Jekyll then concludes that he needs to murder Samantha because she keeps getting in the way of his corpse-fucking. So he calls her and they agree to meet at a mall. Since sending Chambers didn’t work, he decided to enlist two detectives who snoop and find Lenora (Jekyll’s wife) in the basement. And Samantha dies while holding… a window she bought, for some reason.
Jekyll is sent to an asylum while awaiting trial for the three murders and the two stoner kids from the start of the movie find Jekyll’s Sharcopine™️ and take it. The movie closes with Sharcopine™️ PASSING CLINICAL TRIALS???????????????????? WHAT HOW—
There wasn’t much in the way of special effects. The only thing they really did was the gore from Barbie and Samantha, whose faces Mr. Hyde tore off. Also a scene of him blinking too, I guess. They were both… not good™️
There actually wasn’t anything too egregious about the sound design. Everything worked together pretty well, and there was even a song cover of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” that sounded quite lovely. …Though, they still could have gone with something RLS did…
Actually, thinking about it now, the whole movie feels like they mushed “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” with “The Raven” and sharks for some reason.
So the entire time, the film has a very… amateurish cinematography. Which isn’t bad, it’s just very noticeable at parts. For example, when Jekyll and Not-Utterson have their chat, the top part of their faces don’t really move and just the noise does. It’s a very disconcerting look. Also during that scene, Not-Utterson is WAY closer to the camera and he doesn’t blink.
Also, they really like just… repeating scenes over and over? Like when Jekyll was cleaning up Barbie’s body, it kept switching between images of him cleaning the body and… Jesus just hanging out above his wife. It REALLY loved to linger on the religious iconography. It can be really good in small bits, but when you just cut to it after every line of dialogue, it gets a bit… boring, let’s say.
This movie was utterly and completely INSANE. And I have so many unanswered questions… Why does Sharcopine™️ already have packaging?? Why did Jekyll not make the Sharcopine™️ himself?? What happened to the stoner kids? Why does Jekyll have so much religious stuff in his house?? Why did he yoink his wife from her grave?? ?????
Also, a thing they did surprisingly well was… the fact that they’re the same person?? Like, after Mr. Shark had sex, Jekyll essentially had to repent to his wife, even though it wasn’t his own body he had sex in. Good job, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Shark.
After watching that monstrosity, I elected to watch Paper Mask. God, that movie is so underrated.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Shark: 2.4/10 because WHAT WAS THAT. HUH??? It didn’t engage with the original story at all— I mean, I guess Jekyll did take the Sharcopine™️ when killing Samantha so it could be used as a cover but he was still was jailed for the murder so it didn’t even work!
