The Halle Berry Horror Flop With 0% On Rotten Tomatoes

When Halle Berry made her big-screen debut as the crack-addicted Vivian in the most harrowing section of Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever,” she put the entire world on notice that she was going to be an actor first and a movie star second. Obviously, she would quickly learn early in her career to play the Hollywood game and accept thinly-written roles that asked her to do little more than look like one of the most breathtakingly beautiful people on the planet, but she never went more than a year or two without challenging herself. This was particularly difficult to do, given the dearth of complex roles being written for Black women at the time.

Berry was 10 years into her film acting career when she landed the role that would change everything for her. As Leticia Musgrove in Marc Forster’s bleak 2001 drama “Monster’s Ball,” she summoned up a fierce symphony of heartbreak, fury, and romantic yearning. We knew Berry was a formidable talent, but her portrayal of Leticia was on another level. She was the favorite to take home the Oscar for Best Actress throughout most of that year’s awards season, and when she won it felt like Berry’s ascendance was complete. From this point forward, she’d exist in the same actor-star pantheon as Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Taylor, and Katharine Hepburn.

Frustratingly, however, Hollywood went right back to not knowing how to harness Berry’s boundless talents after that. She then proceeded to play Pierce Brosnan’s female sidekick Jinx in “Die Another Day” (the critically reviled Bond film that hastened the “Casino Royale” reboot), delivered a game performance in Matthew Kassovitz’s mediocre horror flick “Gothika,” and was squandered in the embarrassing box office flop “Catwoman.” She eventually got to show off her acting chops opposite Benicio del Toro in “Things We Lost in the Fire,” and earned decent reviews as a woman dealing with dissociative identity disorder in “Frankie & Alice,” but neither movie gained awards traction. At the outset of the 2010s, Berry felt adrift. Alas, at the moment she desperately needed a hit, she starred in what remains the worst reviewed film of her career.

Actor-turned-director John Stockwell had established himself in the 2000s as a capable director of aquatic adventures decked out with wildly appealing casts. The surfing flick “Blue Crush” launched Kate Bosworth’s career, while “Into the Blue” showed off the finely sculpted bodies of Paul Walker and Jessica Alba as they went diving in and around the Bahamas. Neither movie was a classic, but Stockwell at least knew how to make his stars look ravishing in the water.

He did not, however, have particularly strong material at his disposal when he set out to make the swimming-with-sharks thriller “Dark Tide.” Berry stars as a former open-water diver whose love of encountering sharks on their home turf outside of an anti-shark cage has been snuffed out by a tragic accident. When she’s lured back into the water by a wealthy businessman, wouldn’t you know it, the sharks start acting like sharks again, and she finds herself facing yet another toothy tragedy.

As a shark-film aficionado, I can assure you’ve I’ve sat through worse movies than “Dark Tide.” But it’s hard to think of one that uses actual shark footage to such snooze-inducing effect. The critics agree. Released directly to VOD on March 8, 2012, “Dark Tide” boasts a disastrous 0% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it an “oddly tiresome thriller” in his one-star review, while the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Abele wrote, “The only palpable emotion from ‘Dark Tide’ is sadness for Berry, treading water in dreary efforts like this.”

Berry managed to come back up for air the following year, scoring a respectably-sized hit with Brad Anderson’s tautly paced horror-thriller “The Call.” She’s had a few missteps between then and now, but nothing as resoundingly useless as “Dark Tide.”