Oscar winner Halle Berry goes direct to VOD with 'Dark Tide'

It's been almost exactly ten years since Halle Berry picked up a best actress Oscar, and she's celebrating the anniversary with the release of the Video on Demand thriller "Dark Tide." Fans hoping she's primed for another statuette will be disappointed that the film's new poster and trailer make it look like pure schlock.

Directed by John Stockwell (who's still stuck in the ocean after making "Blue Crush" and "Into the Blue"), "Dark Tide" depicts the lives of thrill seekers who dare to go in the water and swim with great whites. 

The poster looks like the VHS cover of a some sort of straight-to-video thriller starring Lance Henriksen and Kari Wuhrer from the mid '90s. The trailer's not much better, but it does offer some great white carnage and a few glimpses of the eternally sexy Berry in a bikini: 

With the exception of her supporting turns in the "X-Men" films, Berry's career has been floundering ever since her well-desevered Oscar win for 2001's "Monster's Ball." Although solid in the largely unseen "Things We Lost in the Fire," Berry's been dogged by such critical flops as "Catwoman" and "Gothika, and she's tried several times to resuscitate her stardom, including her Oscar wannabe "Frankie and Alice," and a comeback attempt in last year's critically reviled allstar film "New Year's Eve," in which she has hardly any screentime.

"Dark Tide" is unlikely to reverse the trend. Her next big film, the Wachowski's ambitious and wholly strange-sounding "Cloud Atlas" could put her back on the A-list, if audiences can wrap their heads around the film's quirks. 

"Dark Tide" is available on demand March 8, followed by a limited theatrical run March 30. Last year's "Trespass," starring Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage, received similar treatment, going to DVD and VOD just two weeks after suffering through a dismal 10-theater run that scraped up around $24,000.

Here's the "Dark Tide" poster: 

What do you think of the poster and trailer? Grade them together at the top of the story.