Hot Spring Shark Attack

Who doesn’t love a good shark movie? It’s 50 years since Jaws and in that time we’ve had all the weak imitations we can eat, but there have been some good ones in there too, especially more recently, as they’ve begun to break the mould. Appropriately enough, 2025 is also a special year for big screen elasmobranchs. They have become increasingly popular in Japan in recent years, but this is the first time that the island nation has ever produced a shark movie of its own.

Such a momentous undertaking deserves a unique approach. The country’s dramatic coastline, with its various inlets, its spectacular bridges and its history of having to fend off threats from the sea, offers plenty of opportunities to imitate what has gone before, and to do it in style, but director Inoue Morihito has wisely chosen to make something quintessentially Japanese, drawing on aquatic traditions with no direct counterpart elsewhere in the world. Thus we get a shark whose soft, cartilaginous body enables it to squeeze through pipes and attack where foolish humans think they can relax: in the country’s celebrated hot springs.

This is not, it must be admitted, the most scientifically accurate of shark films. That said, it has a surprising level of internal consistency, and it’s far from the mindless trash that viewers might expect. It’s skilfully written trash. Its persistent inventiveness, lively pacing and humour make it fun to watch, and at a tight 70 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Although there are hot springs in many parts of Japan, the action here is limited to the famous resort town of Atsumi on the outskirts of Tsuruoka. This specificity is reflected in some of the jokes, but there’s a good deal that anyone who has ever lived in a tourist town will relate to. Additional satirical targets are the cop dramas that were huge in Japan about ten years ago (with close enough counterparts elsewhere to translate well), and the more culturally specific genre of programmes and films in which a small team of scientists, often led by a woman, solves a mystery and saves the country from a terrible threat. Inoue knows the shark genre well enough to find cute ways of reinventing some of its more obscure highlights through this matrix.

All of this risks making it sound more intellectual than is appropriate, so be assured, it is ridiculous from start to finish. The special effects are terrible, the dialogue (knowingly) worse, and there is an unhealthy supply of one-note disposable characters for snacking purposes. Another stock Japanese TV character turns up in the form of a scantily clad muscleman who seems to understand the sharks on an animal level, and who wanders absently in and out of town, tellingly nameless. Influencers attempting to catch the sharks on camera end up competing on the basis of who has the silliest death. The sharks themselves might be competing for cutest roar.

If you’re looking for a serious thriller, you’re in the wrong place, but if you’re up for a bit of fishy fun, this hits the spot. It hangs together remarkably well, and there’s a freshness to it that makes it a great appetiser for a feast of films to come.

Reviewed on: 06 Jul 2025