Review: CHUM is Swimming with Pitiful AI Slop

At this point, any level of heightened devotion to shark cinema is a sick addiction. For every Dangerous Animals or Under Paris, there are seven more “Fin Flicks” that drag audiences to a murky, sunken graveyard of terrible creature effects and nonsense storytelling. So, by that ratio, my positive review of Deep Water felt like a curse on Chum, the next sharky thriller on the horizon. The system, disappointingly, proved right—but for reasons that are far more disheartening than the normal subgenre complaints.

It takes a team of five collaborators, including director Jonathan Zuck, to crack Chum’s narrative and spit out a screenplay that’s essentially, “marriage woes, hungry great white, evil redneck.” Newlyweds Tina (Alice Eve) and Tom (Eric Michael Cole) drag their friends to a Mediterranean destination wedding only to be discussing annulment as the ceremony proceeds. Tina receives a fast-tracked opportunity to become a partner at her firm, but only if she takes on an oil company account—the very company Mr. Activist Tom crusades against. But they try to forget all that and enjoy a day at sea, sipping bubbly aboard a catamaran rich boy Rick (Johnny Gaffney) hires. That’s until a Great White attacks and sinks the party boat, fisherman Roy (Jim Klock) rescues the bobbing snacks, and then reveals his plan to use them all as bait to catch said Great White.

Even with Alice Eve center stage, Chum is an obnoxiously written aqua-drama that immediately undercuts itself by leaning on cheap emotional jabs. Cardboard characters are stripped of proper development and thrust into Act II of a Hallmark movie: Elle Haymond’s the bride’s bitchy sister for kicks (Sadie); Lisa Yaro fills the flirtatious social media queenie role. Chum wants you to care about protagonists without assigning them value, while also trying to sneak a climate control message underneath the sad-sack melodrama of it all. The problem is, Chum doesn’t know how to make you care about its cast of tasty morsels (for a shark), nor does it genuinely try.

However, for a movie like Chum, as long as your om-nom attacks and aquatic horror elements rip, us fans can see past the usual screenplay inadequacies. Unfortunately, and quite tragically, that’s where Zuck betrays the fanbase he’s trying to impress.

From the jump, it’s blatant how heavily Zuck seemingly relies on artificial intelligence for the Great White. It’s like he saw 47 Meters Down and Dangerous Animals, wanted to cash in on their popularity, realized nothing he’d make could compare, so he asked AI to do all the heavy lifting. Every scene involving the shark proudly displays that gross motion-smoothing uncanniness that’s like a VFX Scarlet Filter. Whether it’s munching down an injured captain or just swimming, shots that could have easily been nature photography (like in The Reef or Dangerous Animals), AI’s greasy smudge proves the inferiority of AI-ed special effects that can only imitate what software interprets as reality. Cinematographer Mac Fisken does what he can to accentuate Malta’s pristine island waters, but once the shark flashes on screen, the sins of AI cannot be hidden, and the imagery turns laughable.

It’s such an embarrassing and unavoidable comparison on the heels of Dangerous Animals. Sean Byrne strove to achieve as much realism as possible, splicing in actual shark footage whenever possible. Zuck’s approach is the antithesis; it’s like Chum is a Bizarro Dangerous Animals where advantages turn into derailment. That includes Jim Klock as the vengeful seaman Roy, who gets this confusing grieving lover arc that turns him into an unbelievable madman. Roy will kill the Great White who gnawed his wife in half by any means necessary, yet he also is rooting for Tina and Tom’s marriage? He’s willing to slaughter innocents, even though they could help him catch the ocean’s apex predator? Klock isn’t convincing as a lovesick maniac, which only adds another layer of disappointment on top of an already tedious experience.

It’s a legitimate shame. Maltan special effects royalty Kenneth Cassar is credited as SFX Supervisor, yet pools of digital blood are rendered so poorly, an actor’s face passes under the red layer like it’s a Photoshop overlay. There’s a single Prosthetics Designer listed, and almost no practical gore. Steve Clark and Paul Knott are credited as VFX supervisors … but that’s it. No digital artists are mentioned, just Tunnel Post, which has a whole section on its website dedicated to its AI capabilities, making “the impossible possible.” 

In reality? Indie filmmakers have been making the impossible possible without a lick of AI, and their results are miles ahead of this pitiful AI slop. Kane Parsons used Blender and Adobe After Effects to build a Backrooms empire. Sam Raimi leaned on elbow grease and wacky, gross practical effects to spawn an iconic horror franchise. Chum is supposed to represent a new dawn of effects putting Parsons and Raimi to shame, and yet? The output is pixelated garbage, devoid of creative praise. The type of off-key illustration that might fool your most gullible Aunt on Facebook, but ain’t passing the eyeball test of theater audiences.

Chum is a magnificently dreadful example of why artificial intelligence will never replace SFX artistry. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Zuck’s braindead “Fin Flick” is a string of scenes that might as well have been edited while blindfolded, ADR’ed by someone whose ears are clogged with wax, and are poorly researched by animalian standards. Trust me, I know firsthand just how aggressively bad independent shark animations can look—I’ve seen the worst of the worst. And you know what? I’d still take whatever pixel-vomit beasts populate the worst SYFY originals versus the special awfulness that is AI inorganics. It’s a bad look, in every interpretation of that phrase.

Movie Score: 1.5/5