Shark Movie for People Who’ve Seen Too Many Shark Movies

Read Time:4 Minute, 41 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Hotspring Sharkattack (Onsen shâku)
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Genre: Horror, Comedy, Action
Year Released: 2024, 2025
Runtime: 1h 10m
Director(s): Morihito Inoue
Writer(s): Morihito Inoue
Cast: Shôichirô Akaboshi, Takuya Fujimura, Kiyobumi Kaneko, Koichi Makigami, Masaki Naito, Mio Takaki, Shigeo Ôsako, Sumiya Shiina, Yuu Nakanishi, Hiroyuki Yasuhara, Norito Noji
Where to Watch: in select theaters and VOD July 11, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: Sometimes a movie forces you to question everything you thought you knew about sharks, hot springs, and the fragile human psyche. That movie is HOTSPRING SHARKATTACK (ONSEN SHÂKU). This gloriously unhinged Japanese monster flick answers the question nobody asked: what if a prehistoric killing machine terrorized a sleepy bathhouse town like it owed the water a personal vendetta?

Forget logic. Forget structure. Forget good taste. This kind of film was dreamed up during a fever nap after watching Jaws, Sharknado, and a travel documentary on Japanese onsen culture. The plot—if you can call it that—revolves around a town that realizes its natural hot springs have become home to a flesh-ripping, steam-bathing shark with a thirst for chaos. The solution? Get weirder.

From the first attack (which involves, I kid you not, a geyser of blood shooting sky-high from a peaceful soak) to the final explosive showdown involving bath bombs, bureaucrats, and an unhinged scientist who may or may not have shark-based PTSD, the film doesn’t just jump the shark—it builds a water slide over it and invites you to scream down.

The acting? Chaotic. The effects? Like if someone dared a high school theater club to recreate Deep Blue Sea using leftover Halloween decorations and an industrial fog machine. And yet—against all odds—it works in its own, completely deranged way. There's a kind of scrappy brilliance to how it commits to its bit. One moment you’re watching an older man try to fight off a shark with a ladle, and the next you’re witnessing a public safety meeting devolve into conspiracy theories about ancient aquatic gods.

Not every gag lands. A fair number of them happen and move on before you can even process them. The pacing drags in the middle, and the novelty of "shark + spa" wears thin once you've seen your third or fourth victim get yanked under by an off-screen foam fin. There’s also the constant tonal confusion: is this a horror spoof, a satire about small-town bureaucracy, or an avant-garde nightmare fueled by miso soup and nicotine patches? But let’s be honest—you don’t come to this movie for nuance. You come for the sheer lunacy of watching a community try to reason with a steam-loving apex predator. And on that front, the film delivers… more or less.

Director Morihito Inoue seems to understand that there’s an audience out there desperate for something this ridiculous. Fans of cult oddities, low-budget gorefests, or movies where the shark looks like it was built in someone’s garage—you’re in luck. This is your new weird friend.

Despite its many flaws, there’s an undeniable charm in how much the cast commits to the nonsense. Shôichirô Akaboshi brings the kind of stone-faced gravitas you’d expect from a disaster epic, even when delivering lines about "shark vibrations in the geothermal vents." Mio Takaki is somehow exasperated and heroic in a role that might’ve been written on the back of a napkin.

At just 70 minutes, the film is mercifully brief, but it still manages to cram in slow-motion towel drops, shark hallucinations, a government cover-up, and at least one scene that might have been a dream sequence—or just really bad CGI. Either way, you'll laugh, groan, and probably rewind to ask, “Did that just happen?”

Final Thoughts: This is a beautiful disaster—a film so committed to its madness that you almost have to respect it. It’s not a good movie by any traditional metric. But if you love the kind of brain-melting genre weirdness, this might just be your next favorite cinematic trainwreck. Just know what you're getting into, and maybe don’t watch it alone.

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[photo courtesy of UTOPIA, PLAN A]

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