Movies
The Black Demon (2023)
The Story
In Black Demon, what was supposed to be a nice family vacation to the coastal waters of Baja, Mexico turns into a nightmare. Big-oil employee Paul Sturges must do a long-overdue inspection of the rig, and his family meet him on the rig. Both had trouble getting there, since the locals all know about the “black demon” haunting the waters. This ferocious megalodon shark will stop at nothing to protect its territory.
Along with two men who stayed on the rig and have so far survived, Paul and his family must somehow find a way to get back to shore alive before it strikes again in this epic battle between humans and nature.
Jen’s Thoughts
I try to go into a movie with few expectations, and even if I’ve read bad reviews, I block them out and try to just experience the movie. And that’s what you need to do if you’re going to watch The Black Demon.
Cause it’s not really that great of a movie.
Peter, the leading guy, is awful at being a husband, an oilman, a manager, and even a human being. But somehow he comes up with the solution to saving his family and what remains of the rig crew. Yeah, right.
If anyone should have been considered the star of the movie it would be Peter’s wife. She’s strong and can fight off a handful of drunk men who are ready either for rape or a fight (or both).
But you should still watch it. Watch it for the graphics and because a lot of people spent a lot of time making it and their work deserves to be seen.
The Deets
Rating: R
Concerns: Some grisly images
Runtime: 1h 40m
Genre: Mystery & thriller, Action, Horror
Original Language: English
Release Date (US Theaters): Apr 28, 2023 Limited
Release Date (Streaming): May 30, 2023
Main Cast
Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard
Mira Sorvino as Katherine Ballard
Bill Camp as Batman
Kurt Fuller as Frost
Gary Basaraba as Earl Buchanan
José Zúñiga as Roberto
Gerardo Taracena as El Alacrán
Scott Haze as Chris
Eduardo Verástegui as Paul
Javier Godino as Jorge
Gustavo Sánchez Parra as El Calacas
Production & Crew
Distributor: The Avenue
Production Co: Chocolatito, Lantica Media, Silk Mass, Mucho Mas Media
Director(s): Adrian Grunberg
Producer(s): Arianne Fraser, Delphine Perrier, Jon Silk, Javier Chapa
Writer(s): Boise Esquerra
Cinematography:
Music:
Editor:
Makeup Lead:
Costumes:
The Trailer
Reviews
Rotten Tomatoes: 27% (more)
IMDB: 3.7 / 10
Eric Thiele (from Google Reviews):
Cheap independent knockoff of The Meg. Bad: acting, camera work, cgi & dialogue. Things not making scientific sense. The Daughter in the 1st 30 minutes is nothing more than an annoying back-talking brat. The Father through most of the film is cliche with being some corporate supervisor who denies everything for the sake of profits…. get confronted about signing off on covering up the problems the rig is having yet which he goes on playing dumb to?!… 5 minutes later he has some epiphany (poorly made splicing of random generic clip videos of nature, urban Metropolitain & big oil refinery).. where he contrarily goes on how the corporation told him to do this or that…. yet he just claimed to his wife he didn’t know?!?! The Son must have an extremely short memory because when the Mother & kids are having to get off the boat their riding on towards the rig, gets eaten by the shark right after; Few hours later he decides to take a wooden boat sculpture he found down into the water… guess what predictably happens next (cue eye roll). Daughter states to the Mother “Mom I think were being followed” yet in the previous scene they are quickly hurrying back to their vehicle that they discover the tires had been slashed… and everybody sees the same 4 “drunk” guys following them since the restaurant before it cuts to the next scene where the Daughter stated that stupid dialogue (another short term memory situation not even few minutes later??)… No point to the Aztec god & those mini sculptures other than to add some sort of mythical element to this garbage film.
Brandy Pollard (from Google Reviews):
Without telling you the whole story like some did below, I thought the plot was great, along with the story telling. Bad things happen when we don’t take care of Mother Nature, and there are money hungry scoundrels who only care about themselves and screw the people at the bottom of the totem pole. Characters were all good, except for the dad as some of his lines and the way he said them were very “corny.” I’m an 80’s chick and I love Sci-Fi so this was worth the watch for me! The only thing that didn’t make sense to me was why did they decide for the rig’s demise after he ended up fixing it? Enjoy the show.
I Just Like Records (from Google Reviews):
A decent shark movie After reading all the reviews I was expecting a tragedy, but this movie was surprisingly entertaining. Of course, the low budget is visible, you won’t get a CGI orgy. The dialogs could be better sometimes. Nevertheless, there are many positives. The megalodon looks good. Not showing it much it’s not bad – how many minutes do we see the shark in Jaws? The tension is there, the music is matching the atmosphere. The acting is absolutely OK, too. The script is just in any other giant monster movie, giant monster killing people, hopelessness, sacrifice and in the end, the “good ones” survive. Honestly, I feel there is a negative campaign going on against this movie, so it does not steal a spotlight of another megalodon film from a much bigger studio. That’s why all the hate.