MOVIE REVIEW: The Black Demon

A man named Paul Sturges, who works for an oil company, takes his family on a weekend in Baja California where he has been assigned to inspect an oil rig. When they get there, they find that the oil rig has been leaking for months, polluting the waters offshore and devastating the town there that relied on the fishing industry. It has also apparently attracted a monster shark that the locals believe is a demon come to exact revenge on the humans who have destroyed the environment. Sturges soon finds himself and his family trapped on the oil rig itself where, along with the only two survivors of the crew, they enter a fight to get back to shore before the whole thing collapses or the shark can make them its prey.

This combines South American folklore with the current megalodon craze to create a movie about survival and the consequences of past choices. Due to its setting and plot, this is necessarily pro-environmentalism and anti-oil. Starring Josh Lucas as Sturges, Fernanda Urrejola as his wife Ines, and Julio Cesar Cedillo as one of the crew survivors, the acting in this is excellent. The script is sometimes a little choppy and the special effects are almost non-existent (the shark only has one out of the water appearance), but the performances keep it on track. Made by Amazon Studios for streaming on that platform, this was released before the writers’ and actors’ strikes that all but crippled the industry in 2023. As a result, it was never marketed to a wider audience than on the streaming service itself. However, it is worth seeing, if for nothing more than the effort that the actors put into it.