Reviews
‘Cocaine Shark’ Review – Too Little Creature Feature Mayhem Sinks This Schlocky Throwback
If you’ve sought out any of Mark Polonia‘s previous microbudget (at best) horror releases, you know what quality ceiling to expect from Cocaine Shark. The movie costs as much as the animation to manipulate Cocaine Bear’s left paw for thirty seconds, maybe even less. Polonia’s signature is churning out poster-perfect titles like Amityville in Space or Sharkula with table-scrap resources, which only sometimes deliver as advertised. Cocaine Shark artwork features a ferocious Great White surrounded by bricks of floating white powder but narratively follows a story that aligns more with Joe Dante’s blink-and-miss laboratory creation in Piranha. It’s “Cocaine Shark” in name and marketing alone, undeniably zany with a less-financially-endowed Troma aroma, but ultimately uninteresting as dull dialogue dominates the seventy-minute duration.
Bando Glutz‘s screenplay blends Deep Blue Sea and Synchronic as an East Coast drug kingpin unleashes a “highly addictive stimulant,” HT25. The narcotic achieves an addictive euphoric sensation but has an odd side effect — the user hallucinates out-of-body shark attacks. That’s because the drug is derived from captive sharks, enhanced by psychotropic nanotechnology and other science-y words unconvincingly delivered by Polonia’s cast. It’s up to undercover cop Nick Braddock (Titus Himmelberger) to infiltrate the organization behind HT25, which he already did or didn’t do, because we meet Braddock bound to a hospital bed, recalling-slash-narrating the events of Cocaine Shark in an attempt to clear hazy amnesia.
I can’t stress this enough — this isn’t Universal’s Cocaine Shark. If you require a million-dollar-plus baseline of production quality in your movies, swim in the other direction. Polonia makes movies in backyards or presumably loaned vacation homes, crafting special effects with hand puppets, and won’t be achieving the success of one-in-a-million $10K overachievers like Paranormal Activity. There are parts of Cocaine Shark that would be laughed out of film studies programs should they be submitted for evaluation, but that’s partly the point. Cocaine Shark only aims to be a schlocky throwback to after-dark SYFY specials that maximize conceptual intrigue for the cost of pocket change, missing the mark by a submarine’s length.
The sparkless Cocaine Shark doesn’t boast the necessary commitment of, say, a gore-and-puppets creature feature like Llamageddon or the endearingly sweet Baby Frankenstein. Cocaine Shark attempts to surface absurd mutant experiments from the half-shark, half-human hybrid that’s like an after-school crafts club trying to make a Street Sharks costume or the fully toy-sized “Crab Shark” that’s shown a handful of times as the main antagonist. Unfortunately, the film fails because these somewhat bad-good creature designs are overshadowed by the bait-and-switch detective investigation angle between nondescript characters running an unremarkable drug operation. Cocaine Shark is as much a film about cocaine and sharks as 2020’s Spree is about the tart candy, capitalizing on the scuttlebutt around Elizabeth Banks’ big-studio Cocaine Bear.
You don’t need billion-dollar investors to produce a successful movie, but Cocaine Shark just ain’t it. One single conversation between two characters will be cut incoherently back and forth (presuming both actors couldn’t be physically present), lightning goes from white-out to noticeably dim, and video quality won’t remain consistent (imagine edits back-and-forth between digital camcorders and outdated iPhones) — Polonia’s doing what he can with extremely little, which shows in the wrong ways. We’re here to witness hybrid sea monsters attack their seedy creators, but instead get a plodding narration over poorly acted power struggles between law enforcement, backwoods mafiosos, and drug smugglers. The few bloody wounds we see look like ketchup streaks, there’s no real “action” outside a few seconds of Crab Shark munching on crude claymation victims, and that’s basically all. It’s the kind of movie that distinguishes between the good guys and bad guys with backward hats (that’s how you can tell the t-shirted expert hitman apart from everyone else), lacking the ooey-gooey cheese factor of something like kitchen-sink monster mash Mutant Blast. For a movie with “cocaine” in the title, there’s a shocking lack of energy or adrenaline.
Truthfully, Cocaine Shark feels like a dusty finished-yet-shelved title that could immediately pass with a ripoff Cocaine Bear cover to capitalize on popular culture. Did I chuckle at the goofy stop-motion-clunky creatures inserted into scenes with what looks like the free online version of video editing software? Sure, especially when thinking about how Ray Harryhausen would react. Is Cocaine Shark otherwise an imposter masquerading as a drug-fueled creature feature that’s anything but? Between all the embarrassingly indecipherable accents from actors, usage of random B-roll, and bottom-of-the-barrel horror noir storytelling, Cocaine Shark sinks like Titanic 666.
Cocaine Shark is currently available on Tubi and snorts its way onto DVD and VOD on July 11, 2023.
Movies
‘Recluse’ Review – Harrowing Haunted House Horror With Lots Of Skeletons In Its Closet [Tribeca 2026]
A haunted house story is tense, terrifying storytelling when it’s properly executed. There’s been a growing tendency in horror to blend together harrowing haunted house stories with traumatic homecomings. A family member’s illness or death triggers a return to something dark that was intentionally left behind. Recluse hits all the tropes that one expects to find in this type of horror film, yet it manages to push this story in a daring, disturbing new direction that uses sound as a superpower.
It’s a unique lens to experience a familiar story about family secrets, generational trauma, unresolved grief, and the importance of not just legacy, but preservation. It’s a hell of a directorial debut from Henry Chaisson that’s guaranteed to get under the audience’s skin as they’re dragged through this painful, toxic tale.
Recluse is a gothic haunted house story where an isolated audio engineer, Joan (Sasha Frolova), returns to her family’s estate to check in on her father after he suffers a terrible accident. Joan suddenly discovers something much more sinister that paints her family’s tragedies in a very different light. Chaisson’s debut functions as a fascinating companion piece to this year’s undertone, which does a lot of the same things.
These two films make for a fascinating case of parallel thinking that tackles comparable subject matter through a similar lens, albeit in a bigger, less claustrophobic story in Recluse’s case. In fact, it’s the perfect horror film for anyone who was let down by undertone and didn’t feel like it brought enough to the table. It’s a considerably more conventional horror film, but this isn’t meant to denigrate its high quality. Recluse may hit some familiar notes, but it’s a scary, well-crafted haunted house horror story that goes for the jugular.
A gripping mystery that involves the tragic, unresolved circumstances that surround Joan’s mother teases a chilling connection to the recent horrors that have afflicted her father. Joan desperately tries to put these pieces together and give her family some sense of grander peace before she’s pulled under and becomes another victim of this festering curse that’s systematically worked its way through the Wyatt family. By doing so, Recluse digs into some deeper commentary on collective trauma, a very literal look at the “sins of the father” adage, and how one selfish decision can ripple through generations and fracture off into different dilemmas. By the end, Recluse has brilliantly flipped the powerful concept of legacy on its head by illustrating the horrors and sense of entitlement that can be born out of this idea.
A legacy is just another name for a curse under the right context.
”Listen” is a simple but powerful command from Joan’s father that she briefly obsesses over. In a way, it becomes Recluse’s grander mission statement, whether it’s in response to Joan listening to the people in her life, the signals that her body and mind are telling her, or the world’s greater whims. It’s important to reconnect with these grounding pillars, especially when it feels like control is slipping away.
Recluse excels with how audio and soundscapes can create entire universes that are full of rich details that transport individuals to these environments. There’s also a level of objectivity when it comes to audio recordings and the evergreen permanence that they’re able to provide. Joan’s career as an audio engineer makes sense for someone who wants to cling to hard evidence and proof of existence. It provides great insight into Joan without ever getting lost in contrived exposition.
Joan’s entire life is built around audio engineering, and so it makes sense that Recluse features excellent sound design that really goes above and beyond with its production elements. All of the sound design is expertly handled and turns the film into something special. These auditory elements intuitively keep the audience on edge so that they’re more susceptible to the actual scares that eventually strike. The smallest sound effect gets turned into a crushing, cacophonous assault. It’s a really effective way to build terror. Writer/Director Chaisson also handles the film’s music, which achieves a sublime, unnerving dissonance that further heightens the free-floating anxiety.
The story at the center of Recluse is slightly generic in some respects, but the film’s visual language and tone make it feel distinctly memorable. It also doesn’t hurt that the home that Joan returns to is basically an eerie art studio that’s full of contorted paintings. Recluse never struggles to generate mounting dread and terror that pump through every scene. Powerful, thoughtful cinematography consistently reinforces the film’s themes. Joan is constantly reflected in different surfaces or viewed through mirrors. She’s also often confined to tight, constricting framing that all speaks to her refracted identity during this moment of loss and her attempts to regain agency and control by making sense of something that’s seemingly unexplainable.
Recluse is full of truly disturbing visuals that make it seem like Joan is lost in a dream that turns out to be an extended nightmare. It’s a surreal journey reminiscent of invasive psychological horror like Silent Hill, with a touch of Sinister and Hereditary thrown in for good measure. There are so many individual frames that could endlessly fuel urban legends and creepypastas.
It does a great job with how it presents Joan’s fragile state of mind, where chilling flashes of the past sneak up on her and unresolved trauma manifests into unsettling imagery. There are endless shots that are obscured in darkness, or shadow is creeping in from the corners of frames like a suffocating force of nature. It’s very rare that a scene is fully lit. It leads to a very lonely, isolating atmosphere that’s easy to get lost in.
Chaisson’s debut stands out from the many other high-minded haunted house horror films without succumbing to the same pretensions that often drag down these stories. It’s a grief-stricken character study that’s full of upsetting visuals that scratch at something visceral and raw. The horror elements connect, and the answers to its grander mystery provide an appropriate and believable sense of closure. Those who are looking for an atmospheric horror film that isn’t afraid to be different while still channeling something real will appreciate Recluse.
Recluse made its world premiere at Tribeca; release info TBD.
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