A shark in the ocean is normal, a shark in a swimming pool is pushing it, but A shark living in a forest is where Japanese B-movie director Minoru Kawasaki apparently decided the genre needed to go next.
That is the wonderfully stupid premise behind Shars 51 (ใทใฃใผใบ51), a Japanese horror-comedy made specifically for the 3rd Tokyo International Shark Film Festival - The 57-minute film is both a parody and an affectionate tribute to Steven Spielberg's Jaws, with a mutant shark leaving the sea and terrorising people in the surrounding forest.
The official festival description keeps the premise beautifully simple - a shark appears in a forest and humans are forced into a spectacular battle against it, and that's about as far as you need to go before the stupidity becomes part of the appeal.
It also specifically describes the movie as being packed with respect, homage and parody of Spielberg's Jaws, while also presenting it as a celebration of the film that established the modern shark-movie template..
51 Years of Jaws, Kawasaki Style
The anniversary connection isn't some bit of marketing added after the fact either - Jaws was released in 1975, making 2026 its 51st anniversary, and Shars 51 was created specifically for the Tokyo International Shark Film Festival around that idea.
This also makes the film part of Kawasaki's continuing fascination with deliberately ridiculous shark cinema, as Shars 51 follows his 2025 film Matsushima Tomoko Shark Game as his second shark movie, so this isn't Kawasaki randomly discovering that sharks are popular, because it seems he's actively building a little corner of Japanese B-movie cinema around them.
The film was also crowdfunded through CAMPFIRE, with the campaign raising ยฅ1,339,000 from 128 backers, reaching 133% of its ยฅ1 million target.
The Cast Is Properly Weird
The film stars Ryosuke Nogi, Andy Wu, Satoshi Kobayashi, Ukulele Eiji and Goro Ibuki, with John Migliore and Mayumi Kurata making friendship appearances, and the idol group Mitsubatch Girls contribute an insert song and appear in the movie, while Isamu Ishibashi receives a special appearance credit.
Ryosuke Nogi has worked extensively in Japanese film and television, while Andy Wu is known as a masked professional wrestler and martial artist, and Satoshi Kobayashi is a former WKA Muay Thai World Lightweight Champion and has acting credits including The Great Yokai War and Kawasaki's own genre productions, while Ukulele Eiji is a comedian who has appeared in Japanese television and previously worked with Kawasaki.
Then there's John Migliore, a Canadian actor particularly familiar to cult shark-movie fans through the Ouija Shark films, and finally Goro Ibuki, one of Japan's veteran actors, gets a special appearance โ which is a rather impressive bit of casting for a 57-minute film about a mutant shark living in a forest.
Trailer
From Jaws to Shars
Kawasaki is taking the most recognisable shark film ever made, celebrating its 51st anniversary and then deliberately fucking with the formula - and there is already at least some audience reaction on Filmarks if you want to give them a read, but a film trying to celebrate Jaws by taking the basic idea, throwing a mutant shark into a damn forest and seeing how far the joke can go, is an instant win for me.
Check out these other Japanese horror movies too.
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