I’ve always had a soft spot for a good B-movie. The kind where the plot is ridiculous, the effects are rubbery and the actors deliver their lines like they’re auditioning for a community theater production of Jaws 5: The Musical. There’s charm in the chaos, if it’s done with the right amount of self-awareness and reckless enthusiasm. But here’s the thing — there’s a fine line between “so bad, it’s good” and “so bad it made me question my life choices.”

Directed and written by Morihito Inoue, Hot Spring Shark Attack is the kind of fever dream premise that sounds genius after two margaritas (and believe me, I never say no to a good margarita). Set in modern-day Japan, the film follows a wave of chaos unleashed when prehistoric sharks wake from their geothermal slumber and begin terrorizing a luxury wellness retreat built — of course — on unstable hot springs.

These aren’t your average sharks, though.

Thanks to their oddly flexible bodies, they slither through the resort’s piping system like murderous spaghetti noodles, surfacing in bathtubs, pools and influencer livestreams to wreak havoc. To stop the aquatic carnage, local police chief Denbei (Kiyobumi Kaneko) is forced to form an uneasy alliance with Mayor Kanichi (Takuya Fujimura) and marine biologist Mayumi (Yuu Nakanishi). Their best hope? A mysterious man named Macho (Sumiya Shiina), whose inexplicable mastery of hand-to-shark combat is never explained, but absolutely essential to their survival.

Hot Spring Shark Attack is a bold swing for something new and undeniably fun, and honestly, kudos to Morihito Inoue for going all-in with reckless abandon. In an age where even B-movies feel focus-grouped into oblivion, Inoue dares to steer into the absurd, fusing kaiju camp, creature-feature chaos and quirky humor in a way that’s — if nothing else — original. There’s real ambition simmering beneath the surface here, even if it’s buried under soap-opera acting, dialogue that feels like it was translated via Ouija board and special effects that wouldn’t pass for a PlayStation 2 launch title.

It’s that ambition that gives the film a strange sort of charm. You get the sense that Inoue genuinely believed in this concept — the ancient shark, the bubbling geothermal threat, the shirtless martial artist punching sea creatures in the steam. It’s like someone tried to remake The Meg with a GoPro, a green screen and a prayer scrawled in Sharpie on the back of a sushi menu. The vision may be flawed, but it’s fearless. Inoue took a risk, and while it may not have paid off in quality, it deserves a nod for sheer creative guts.

Now we start with the bad…

The cast ranges from confused to outright comatose, like they were all tricked into showing up for a completely different movie and just decided to roll with it. Yuu Nakanishi, as marine biologist Mayumi, delivers her lines with the glassy-eyed detachment of someone reading a dishwasher manual in a hostage video. Any attempt at emotional depth sinks faster than a lead scuba suit. With the exception of the gloriously over-the-top Macho, every character is about as memorable as steamed broccoli. By the halfway point, I was actively rooting for the sharks to thin the herd, just so we could get back to Macho roundhouse-kicking sea monsters into oblivion.

And the sharks. Oh boy, the sharks. They look like they were molded out of melted fruit snacks, dipped in Vaseline and animated using trial software from a forgotten middle-school computer lab. Their movement is a fever dream — glitchy, jerky and somehow both too fast and too slow, like someone was scrubbing through the footage with a broken remote. One literally phases halfway through the floor and just… keeps going, oblivious to the fact that water, walls and basic collision physics are supposed to matter.

And then there’s the “king shark,” which struts onto the scene with an actual gold crown glued to its head, like it wandered off the set of a medieval-themed aquarium show. It’s not special effects — it’s a tech demo gone wrong. At a certain point, I stopped asking how this got made and started wondering if the editor’s 5-year-old got a producer’s credit.

I give Hot Spring Shark Attack a pitiful one out of five stars. Let’s be clear: Hot Spring Shark Attack makes Sharknado look like Jurassic Park. That’s not hyperbole. Sharknado had bad effects, yes, but it knew exactly what it was: a joke with teeth. This movie feels like it’s laughing at itself in the wrong places, dragging you along for the awkward ride. And yet… I wouldn’t be shocked if 10 years from now, this thing has a midnight screening at some dingy theater, with people shouting lines and wearing inflatable shark fins.

Cult classics have risen from shallower graves.

But for now, I can’t recommend it. Not even with irony. The acting is flatter than a shark’s smile, the plot bubbles over into nonsense and the effects are… well, if there’s an award for “Most Hilariously Exploding Shark Death” (and, spoiler alert, there just might be one in this year’s #HauntLife Movie Awards), this one’s got it locked. I love a good B-movie, but this one feels past redemption.