The greatest movie ever made..!

Some things I liked some I did not.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

At the beginning of the film you meet the undeveloped main character. He is a lifeguard who tries to warn everyone that the shark is actually real and it will kill everyone. However, no one bats an eyelash and keep on swimming until more people keep dying. The story itself is not that bad, but the telling of it was sub par to say at the least. The acting was B grade for sure. Also, the shark seemed to only ever go after the legs and no other injuries besides mutilation of the legs happened. Seriously, like 10 people got their legs ripped off but no one made it out with a missing arm or bite in the stomach. The sharks animation resembled Jaws, except with a smaller budget. For 2004, it did not reach any quality worth praising. Rubber sharks and poorly done CGI shots make the movie a cringing experience for a good 10 minutes.

This is a made for TV movie based on a series of shark attacks that took place off the New Jersey shore in July of 1916.Anyone who remembers all of the awful TV movies from the '70's and '80's, with their clichéd scripts, amateurish direction, horrible acting and complete lack of anything that could ever be mistaken for production values, will know what I mean when I say that this "horror" story belongs to that era.The entire production comes across as if a bunch of 12-year-olds who had just seen "JAWS" decided to make a copy of it, wrote a script, got a hold of some equipment in a pawn shop, and convinced the worst community theater members they could find to play the characters.John Rhys-Davies has been involved in one bad TV movie after another, and the only reason for this that I can figure out, is that he must work cheap; the last half-way good acting job he did was in "SHOGUN" in 1980, and in this he is simply awful...and he's the best one in this cast.Someone named Jack Sholder is listed as the director. Going by this effort he seems to be Ed Wood reincarnated...either that, or he was somewhere else while this was being produced.All in all, I have to say that if you have an hour and a half free, and if you spent it banging your head on a wall, that would be less painful than watching this genuinely horrible horror movie.

It's all too easy to just nonchalantly label "12 Days of Terror" as being just another imitation of the legendary horror blockbuster "Jaws" and exclusively focus on its shortcomings. Especially when numerous and reliable sources state that Peter Benchley himself based his novel on these same facts that occurred in the summer of 1916. You can't really accuse a movie of being a rip-off when it's based on facts, not even when it comes more nearly 30 years after a milestone movie that commercialized these same facts. "12 Days of Terror" is an admirable and modest made-for-TV production that doesn't even dream of competing with "Jaws". Director Jack Sholder ("The Hidden", "Alone in the Dark") has more than enough experience to realize he plays in an entirely different league than Steven Spielberg and merely just attempted to shoot a solid and factual shark movie. As far as I'm concerned he succeeded. The movie's main trump is undeniably the reasonably accurate depiction of the 1916 setting. The events occurred nearly 100 years ago, so you already know beforehand that this movie won't primarily revolve on sexy young chicks in minuscule bikinis. We received quite a lot of bloodthirsty shark movies recently ("Spring Break Shark Attack", "Red Water", "Shark Attack 1 to 47", etc…) but there were actually just simple excuses to show hot chicks and hunky boys parading in the latest beach fashion. This film is different. Admittedly the characters are still rather one-dimensional, but at least they're not complete retards. During the first days of the unusually hot summer of 1916, the New Jersey beaches become overflowed with tourists that wish to forget all the daily issues, like that horrible war being fought in Europe. The warm currents also bring another and very unwelcome visitor to Matawan in the shape of a hungry and extremely aggressive shark. The authorities still refuse to close down the beaches even after two fatal accidents, but when the unstoppable animal even swims up the creeks in search for more victims, courageous life guard Alex plans to catch the shark himself. "12 Days of Terror" is a thoroughly unsurprising and unspectacular thriller, but it's never pretentious or boring. Due to budgetary restrictions there aren't many special effects, exhilarating attacks or enchanting underwater shots to admire. Actually, we only properly get to see the shark's fin and even that looks fake. The acting performances are okay and the early 20th century decors are convincing enough. It's, simply put, a harmless little TV time-waster.

12 Days of Terror is a dramatization of real events during the 1916 oddity where a shark cruises the NJ shores and tributaries for 12 days apparently looking for people to munch on. Some say that the concept of Jaws was taken from this true story. Many of the same Jaws characters are there, the business people and authorities who won't listen because money is involved, the few who understand the seriousness of the problem, and the 'main course' public who rely on the authorities to keep them safe from something they don't understand. Some discussion over just how many sharks were involved was glossed over since humans are a large meal and sharks don't need to eat every day because of a slower metabolism. Good acting, relatively good camera work, interesting scenery, and a passable script.