Can't believe I'm saying this, but it exceeded my expecations

I love a good shark movie, but can't stand the clearly obvious low-budget CGI ones that are everywhere. The preview for this was decent and I recognized the actress from Lost all grown up so I thought I'd try it.

It had some qualities and was very reminiscent of the first DBS, a guilty pleasure of mine. The first half was them trying to sound scientific and actually do sciency-stuff which was somewhat interesting and grounded, then it turns into a decent but halfway cheesy gorefest.

The good? The effects and production values were above direct-to-video - can we start saying VOD quality instead? It wasn't nearly at the level of Sharknado. In fact, I'd say it was as good as I've seen in recent memory. In some scenes the sharks looked pretty dang real. The main actress gave it her all (especially in her end scene) and she is pretty pleasing to the eyes. They even had a joke or two that made me laugh.

The bad? There is some over-the-top pushing of climate change, but I do admire how they tried to intertwine it into the plot a bit. There was some unnecessary feminist stuff going on (less is more IMO), but at this point with movies embrace it or look past it I suppose. There's a ridiculous fight scene that comes out of nowhere and is eye-rolling. A detonator comes into play that is straight out of an A-team rerun. I could go on with some of the cheesy stuff that happens later on, but by that time you're pretty invested in the flick so you'll keep going. The ending shark scene IMO made up for it.

Am I glad I watched it? Sure. Definitely worth a Redbox rental.