![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The short of it: as bad as suspected, but nearly bad/funny enough to become a cult classic.
The long if it: (there will be spoilers, so don't read on if you don't want to be!) Disaster movies have jumped the shark. They did what everyone knows they shouldn’t do – they crossed the streams. Everyone knows disaster movies come in two flavors: monster and natural disaster. You can combine monsters (Sharktopus!) and stack disasters, but to combine monsters and disasters?! What’s next, Sharktopusicane? Dinocrocquake? Where will the madness end?!
There are movies so very bad that they're good. Plan 9 from Outer Space. Mega Piranha. Return of the Killer Tomatoes. And if you want that… watch one of those. If you want a decent shark movie... actually, I can only think of one off the top of my head that is fair to the sharks and has accurate shark behaviors, but it's barely about the shark (Soul Surfer). If you want a completely biased and unfair to shark "they are monsters" movie, Bait or the classic Jaws are good bets. If you want a good weather-related disaster movie… there aren’t a lot of those, either, especially dealing with tornados. Ice Twisters is terrible (serious, hail like bullets?!). Night of the Twisters is bad. Twister is okay, but not really in the same genre, and way too big a budget flick to compare here.
But let’s say you’re a glutton for bad movies and you think “oh, how bad can it be?” Well, let me tell you.
A quick note on the dog: no, as far as we know, he doesn’t die. A lot of sharks do, though they are obviously fake and even I can handle that.
The CGI: horrible. Beyond horrible. So fake it’s laughable, which might be fine except… the continuity issues. There’s a far-out shot of a guy on a personal watercraft, in decent enough weather, then the close-up of the guy and it’s suddenly stormy and waves are splashing. Ditto the surfing scenes. Back and forth. Of course, the weather did clear and cloud up several times in the course of the movie, but not quite THAT quickly.
Plausibility: completely not. Yes, I know it’s a stupid horror movie and there is some suspension of disbelief. But some things bother me more than others. I could, possibly, buy that sharks would survive getting sucked up in a tornado and tossed around. …possibly. Well, okay, not “buy” it, but be okay with it. But to have them eating mid-air, still concerned about food when I would be much more willing to bet their little sharky brains were slightly more obsessed with the thought “holy crap I’m flying through the air where is the water?!?!” and “ouch ouch ouch debris debris ouch ouch ouch!”? No. And to have them shunted through the city in the storm sewer system? Oh, no, we’re back to the old trope of storm sewer systems big enough to walk through. *sigh* Again, most modern storm sewers? Yeah, the pipes may be as big as 72”, but for the most part it’s a network of 15”-36” pipes, and those manhole covers only have a diameter of 24”. I can’t see those monster-sized sharks fitting though those, even with the force of water pressure. And, finally, dissipating tornadoes – which the news said we a strong EF-4, mind you - by flying a helicopter to the edge and tossing in a bomb made of a hand-held butane tank and a flare? That probably bothered me the most, because you know there are people who are going to think that would actually work and therefore the only reason tornadoes level towns in the Midwest is because the government won’t stop them.
Plot: the character’s relationships were a little confusing in the beginning (are the bar owner and waitress dating? If so, her ending up with his son, as implied, is creepy), and from there on it was a very predictable arc. I thought I’d lost the “guess who survives” game, but there was a bluff (not fair, since it was so out of the bounds of plausibility it shouldn’t count, since you could just as easily say they “magically” reappeared) and I was right about the remaining characters in the end.
The acting: not the worst, but pretty bad.
The best part: when “the end” flashed up at the end of the movie… partly because it was the end of the movie, but mostly because they went cute and used “fin.”
Also on that evening were: Swamp Shark (which I sadly missed but the library does have), Two-Headed Shark Attack (which I saw some of, but fell asleep during) and Super Shark (which I have recorded).
The long if it: (there will be spoilers, so don't read on if you don't want to be!) Disaster movies have jumped the shark. They did what everyone knows they shouldn’t do – they crossed the streams. Everyone knows disaster movies come in two flavors: monster and natural disaster. You can combine monsters (Sharktopus!) and stack disasters, but to combine monsters and disasters?! What’s next, Sharktopusicane? Dinocrocquake? Where will the madness end?!
There are movies so very bad that they're good. Plan 9 from Outer Space. Mega Piranha. Return of the Killer Tomatoes. And if you want that… watch one of those. If you want a decent shark movie... actually, I can only think of one off the top of my head that is fair to the sharks and has accurate shark behaviors, but it's barely about the shark (Soul Surfer). If you want a completely biased and unfair to shark "they are monsters" movie, Bait or the classic Jaws are good bets. If you want a good weather-related disaster movie… there aren’t a lot of those, either, especially dealing with tornados. Ice Twisters is terrible (serious, hail like bullets?!). Night of the Twisters is bad. Twister is okay, but not really in the same genre, and way too big a budget flick to compare here.
But let’s say you’re a glutton for bad movies and you think “oh, how bad can it be?” Well, let me tell you.
A quick note on the dog: no, as far as we know, he doesn’t die. A lot of sharks do, though they are obviously fake and even I can handle that.
The CGI: horrible. Beyond horrible. So fake it’s laughable, which might be fine except… the continuity issues. There’s a far-out shot of a guy on a personal watercraft, in decent enough weather, then the close-up of the guy and it’s suddenly stormy and waves are splashing. Ditto the surfing scenes. Back and forth. Of course, the weather did clear and cloud up several times in the course of the movie, but not quite THAT quickly.
Plausibility: completely not. Yes, I know it’s a stupid horror movie and there is some suspension of disbelief. But some things bother me more than others. I could, possibly, buy that sharks would survive getting sucked up in a tornado and tossed around. …possibly. Well, okay, not “buy” it, but be okay with it. But to have them eating mid-air, still concerned about food when I would be much more willing to bet their little sharky brains were slightly more obsessed with the thought “holy crap I’m flying through the air where is the water?!?!” and “ouch ouch ouch debris debris ouch ouch ouch!”? No. And to have them shunted through the city in the storm sewer system? Oh, no, we’re back to the old trope of storm sewer systems big enough to walk through. *sigh* Again, most modern storm sewers? Yeah, the pipes may be as big as 72”, but for the most part it’s a network of 15”-36” pipes, and those manhole covers only have a diameter of 24”. I can’t see those monster-sized sharks fitting though those, even with the force of water pressure. And, finally, dissipating tornadoes – which the news said we a strong EF-4, mind you - by flying a helicopter to the edge and tossing in a bomb made of a hand-held butane tank and a flare? That probably bothered me the most, because you know there are people who are going to think that would actually work and therefore the only reason tornadoes level towns in the Midwest is because the government won’t stop them.
Plot: the character’s relationships were a little confusing in the beginning (are the bar owner and waitress dating? If so, her ending up with his son, as implied, is creepy), and from there on it was a very predictable arc. I thought I’d lost the “guess who survives” game, but there was a bluff (not fair, since it was so out of the bounds of plausibility it shouldn’t count, since you could just as easily say they “magically” reappeared) and I was right about the remaining characters in the end.
The acting: not the worst, but pretty bad.
The best part: when “the end” flashed up at the end of the movie… partly because it was the end of the movie, but mostly because they went cute and used “fin.”
Also on that evening were: Swamp Shark (which I sadly missed but the library does have), Two-Headed Shark Attack (which I saw some of, but fell asleep during) and Super Shark (which I have recorded).