Director – Adrian Grünberg, Screenplay – Boise Esquerra, Story – Carlos Cisco, Producers – Javier Chapa, Arianne Fraser, Delphine Perrier & Jon Silk, Photography – Antonio Riestra, Music – Leonardo Heiblum & Jacobo Lieberman, Visual Effects – PFX (Supervisors – Jindrich Cervenka & Tibor Melis), Special Effects Supervisor – Jaime Castillo, Production Design – Carlos Osorio. Production Company – The Avenue/Highland Film Group/Mucho Mas Media/Silkmass.
Cast
Josh Lucas (Paul Sturgess), Fernanda Urrejola (Ines Sturgess), Venus Ariel (Audrey Sturgess), Carlos Salorzano (Tommy Sturgess), Julio Cesar Cedillo (Chato), Jorge Jimenez (Junior), Raul Mendez (El Rey), Hector Jimenez (Chocalatito), Edgar Flores (Crazy Eyes), Luis Del Valle (Bartender), Bolivar Sanchez (Diver), Omar Chaparro (Sidekick)
Plot
Paul Sturgess, a safety engineer for Nixon Oil, arrives in Baja, Mexico along with his Mexican wife Ines and their two children. He has been sent to conduct a safety report on the disused El Diamante oil rig and determine whether it should be dismantled. Paul is shocked to find the town in a state of severe downturn since the rig was shut down. Travelling out to the rig, he finds it in a badly dilapidated condition. After finding the behaviour of the locals threatening, Ines and the children are forced to flee out to the rig to join him. However, they become trapped there as the boat is sunken by a giant megalodon shark. The locals call the shark the El Negro Demonio (The Black Demon) and believe that it is the incarnation of the Aztec god Tlaloc come to exact a sacrifice for the way the environment has been despoiled.
The killer shark film began with Jaws (1975), which spawned a great many imitators. Most killer shark films these days are dominated by the success of Sharknado (2013) and come in a deliberately ridiculous vein. On the other side of the coin, since hits like The Shallows (2016) and 47 Meters Down (2017), as well as the earlier likes of Open Water (2003) and The Reef (2010), there have been a growing body of films based around survival in shark-infested waters.
The Black Demon joins a more recent growing body of these shark survival films down the lesser budgeted end of the market that also includes the likes of Adrift (2017), Great White (2021), Swim (2021), Maneater (2022), The Requin (2022), Shark Bait (2022), Shark Waters (2022), Blind Waters (2024), The Last Breath (2024), Shark Warning (2024), Something in the Water (2024), Fear Below (2025) and Into the Deep (2025). (For a more detailed listing see Killer Shark Movies).
The Black Demon is capably made in many ways. It has a star Josh Lucas, who is used to more upmarket material than most sharky films. And there is quite a bit more focus on his family dynamics than you usually get in such films, which are not too badly played, even if there is nothing original about the writing, especially when it comes to Lucas’s secrets being exposed.
Josh Lucas, Fernanda Urrejola and Julio Cesar Cedillo stranded aboard the abandoned rig
The big negative is that the shark never gets to do that much. The underwater photography is poor and scenes like the descent in the diving bell are not built up for the drama they should have been. Even so, these films live or die on the shark attack scenes and The Black Demon fails to place its shark in the centre of the action in any dramatically interesting way.
The film also makes its shark into a prehistoric megalodon, which has been a newcomer on the killer shark front since the early 2000s, although this proves to be no more significant than that the shark is much bigger than usual. One of the more interesting ideas is having the Mexicans see the black demon as the embodiment of the Aztec god Tlaloc – the poster and trailer for the film prominently display the claim “Based on the Mexican legend.” In actual Aztec mythology, Tlaloc was the god of rain, rivers, mountains and storms – although not the sea. Tlaloc was also a more beneficent god, although sacrifices were still conducted to it. In the film, Tlaloc is ocean-going and seen as vengeful for despoliation of the environment, which can only be saved by a human sacrifice. It is not entirely clear if we are meant to take this literally or else just the traditional superstitions of some of the characters, although the end seems to indicate that the former might be the case.
The Black Demon was a US production shot in Mexico. Adrian Grünberg is a former assistant director who had previously directed Get the Gringo (2012) and Rambo: Last Blood (2019).
