![\"CHUM](\"https:\/\/www.assignmentx.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/CHUM-Poster-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCHUM movie poster | \u00a92026 IFC<\/p>\n
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Alice Eve, Eric Michael Cole, Elle Haymond, Sarah Siadat, Johnny Gaffney, Lisa Yaro, Jim Klock, Vince Jolivette, Stephen Oliver
Writers: Jonathan Zuck and Joe Leone, story by Dick Grunert and Ryan R. Johnson and James Kondelik
Director: Jonathan Zuck
Distributor: IFC
Release Date: June 5, 2026<\/p>\n
CHUM is the latest entry in the shark-obsessed-psycho-with-a-boat subgenre. It also meshes, perhaps coincidentally, with the 2024 sharks-but-no-psycho-ruin-a-Mediterranean-destination-wedding SOMETHING IN THE WATER.<\/p>\n
Our narrator is Roy (Jim Klock) who, in the opening sequence, loses his wife to an enormous Great White in the sea off Malta. He begins by saying in voiceover, \u201cYou took her from me.\u201d This is followed by a monologue about how much Roy loves his wife and includes the line, \u201cHer scream lost in the roar of the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t anything particularly wrong with the line, except that we see the whole incident and then some \u2013 CHUM is very gore-friendly in all its shark attacks \u2013 and the woman is already underwater when the attack occurs. There\u2019s no scream.<\/p>\n
So, are we supposed to think that Roy\u2019s imagination is playing tricks, or that director Jonathan Zuck and his co-writer Joe Leone, working from a story by Dick Grunert and Ryan R. Johnson and James Kondelik, aren\u2019t paying close attention to what they\u2019re doing?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Roy says he spent his life on the ocean, but \u201cwhen you took her, I learned something new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then we cut to a wedding banquet, where proud father Reginald (Stephen Oliver) is toasting his daughter the bride Tina (Alice Eve) and her groom Tom (Eric Michael Cole). Also in attendance are Tina\u2019s irritable younger sister Sadie (Elle Haymond), bridesmaids Rachinda (Sarah Siadat) and Britney (Lisa Yaro), and Eric\u2019s bro-ish best man Rick (Johnny Gaffney).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a beautiful setting and a good-looking group, but it doesn\u2019t take long for us to realize this union may not last. Tina and Tom have had a bitter fight about something that they seem unable to resolve. Tom winds up sleeping on the beach near the tide line, while Tina passes out on their hotel room bed in her wedding gown.<\/p>\n
The nature of the dispute turns out to be one of the best aspects of CHUM. It\u2019s real, it\u2019s not the clich\u00e9s that we too often get about onscreen marital disputes, and it\u2019s wholly plausible that the timing is such that the couple haven\u2019t had to confront it earlier.<\/p>\n
Unaware of trouble in paradise, Rick has arranged a boat outing for the wedding party (sans Dad). Tina and Tom don\u2019t want to go, but Rick guilts them into it \u2013 renting the boat for the day cost him a fortune.<\/p>\n
The proprietor of The Tipsy Mermaid, Captain Mackey (Vince Jolivette), welcomes the six passengers aboard. He assures shark-averse Britney that there have never been attacks in these waters.<\/p>\n
This again makes us wonder what\u2019s happening on a meta level. We can see that The Tipsy Mermaid is out by the same coastline that we saw in the opening, so we know there\u2019s been at least one shark attack here. Is Captain Mackey uninformed or lying?<\/p>\n
A little later, we see that the microphone on the communications panel is severed. Our minds leap toward sabotage, but \u2013 spoiler alert \u2013 no, it\u2019s just shoddy upkeep on The Tipsy Mermaid.<\/p>\n
In reality (and easy to Google for Mackey or anyone in the group to who knew they\u2019d be going out to sea that day), while they are rare, there have been shark attacks off Malta.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, Tom, who is meant to be an expert on these matters, asserts that Great Whites are strangers to these waters, but are being driven north by climate change. It\u2019s laudable that CHUM makes climate change part of the plot (and not just because of where the shark is), but again, there is a whole actual (albeit declining) subspecies of Great Whites in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re trying to figure out how all this will link up with Roy and what he\u2019s learned, and we get to that, although perhaps not the way we expect, which is another CHUM asset.<\/p>\n
Except for when the shark needs to interact with humans and\/or vessels, the animal looks realistic, like footage of a genuine Great White. We also get a variety of fish in the underwater shots, which is a nice touch.<\/p>\n
But there are the common-to-the-subgenre tropes of the shark looking way too big every time she breaches and eating way too much. Also, sharks do not growl.<\/p>\n
One key aspect of this subgenre is how intrigued we are by the human villain. Here, the link between motivation and action doesn\u2019t stack up well against that of comparable characters (e.g., Quint in JAWS or Bruce Tucker in DANGEROUS ANIMALS).<\/p>\n
As these kinds of movies go, CHUM is moderately diverting, but it\u2019s easy to see where it could have been better.<\/p>\n
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Article:\u00a0Movie Review: CHUM<\/a><\/p>\n