"The Black Demon" gets points for competence but loses points for being boring

The Black Demon (2023)

A survival movie about a family being trapped on an oil rig and terrorized by a megalodon shark should be buckets of fun. Director Adrian Grünberg (whose biggest claims to fame have been the 2012 Mel Gibson starrer “Get the Gringo” and 2019’s “Rambo: Last Blood”) and writer Boise Esquerra even bring a cultural specificity to their Big Ass Shark movie. Suspending a little disbelief is fine, especially when the unconvincing, CGI-rendered shark does not look of this world, but “The Black Demon” should have gone Full Dumb or actually tried to be legitimately thrilling. In its current neither-fish-nor-fowl approach, it just settles for mediocre. 

Family man Paul Sturges (Josh Lucas) works for a big oil company. He gets sent to Mexico to complete an inspection on a rig out at sea. To make a vacation out of it, Paul brings along his wife (Fernanda Urrejola), teenage daughter (Venus Ariel), and young son (Carlos Solórzano). While he takes care of business, his family is supposed to stay on shore, until a menacing run-in with some locals forces them to take a motorboat to the rig with Paul. As Paul gets to work, he discovers the rig to be abandoned, except for two men and a dog. These men, Chato (Julio Cesar Cedillo) and Junior (Jorge A. Jimenez), are stranded, thanks to a pissed-off shark. It’s not any shark, though, but local legend El Demonio Negro (The Black Demon), a primeval megalodon that can apparently cause mirages for its human victims. 

“The Meg” may not be a great movie by any stretch, but it was unpretentious, PG-13 fun that knew what it was. “The Black Demon” seems to be aiming for respectability rather than cheesy, R-rated fun, except when it treats the shark’s mythos and silly abilities with a straight face. Mostly, it’s repetitive and kind of boring with a couple of shameless references to “Jaws” (listen closely and there’s a variation on John Williams’ dun-dun theme). In this megalodon movie, there’s just not nearly enough of the megalodon, and perhaps that’s because it looks like an unfinished, ultra-digital behemoth. As Paul, Josh Lucas comes off affable enough and then smug and hot-tempered, putting little rooting interest in whether or not Paul redeems himself after so much corporate unscrupulousness. There are spurts of mild tension, but they’re in between a lot of standing around, ham-fisted environmental messaging, and talky mythologizing about the Meg, er, the Black Demon. “The Black Demon” is competently made but pretty underwhelming in the terror department. 

Grade: C

The Avenue is releasing “The Black Demon” (100 min.) in select theaters on April 28, 2023.