Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast

There's just no end to the goofy possibilities in the "cheap and cheesy monster movie" genre. Here we have a finned predator that burrows through the snowy ground of New York State, popping up time and time again to turn various moron victims into Snow Shark chow. Among those who determine to destroy the beast: a knuckle-headed, macho local (played by writer / director / cinematographer Sam Qualiana), a team including two scientists and a boorish Great White Hunter, and a Sheriff (played by Sam Q.s' father, C.J. Qualiana) who has a personal stake in the mission.

"Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast" gives you exactly what you expect from this genre: a silly script with various attempts at clever lines, inane characters & amateurish performances, and utterly laughable special effects. (Still, I give Qualiana credit: he uses a puppet head for the Snow Shark, keeping digital nonsense to a minimum.) The wintry atmosphere does help matters a fair bit. The quality of the pacing is fine - this clocks in at a reasonable 80 minutes. (Although, some people would argue that it's still 80 minutes too long.)

Qualiana Sr. delivers the closest thing that this picture has in terms of a decent performance; he looks very serious throughout. That said, Qualiana Jr. is a hoot as a stereotypical redneck, and Andy Taylor is likewise amusing as the amiable dope who keeps ribbing his female cohort.

Perked up somewhat by its hilarious (if not that original) ending.

One good thing: this viewer did enjoy that closing credits tune, "She's Gonna Eat You Alive".

Producer / unit production manager Gregory Lamberson (director of "Slime City") has an unbilled cameo at around the one hour mark; one of the editors is veteran D.I.Y. filmmaker Mark Polonia.

Five out of 10.

Three biologists studying a strange phenomenon, stumble upon a bloody scene in the snow, unaware that a deadly predator is stalking them.

Now you could easily dismiss this movie after about ten minutes or so, and realise that it is abysmal, woeful in almost every single possible way, and you'd be right, it's an absolute shocker, but let's give them some credit for making a movie, that people are still curious about.

They made it, clearly on a budget of a few dollars, and props from somebody's store cupboard, so I'm at least going to give them credit for that.

The shark scenes are hilarious, you don't really see any shark attacks, just pinky red snow. The reactions to the deaths are amusing, especially the dude who loses his girlfriend, he doesn't seem in the least bit bothered.

I've watched it twice now, both time after a night out, it's awful, it looks as though it was filmed on a 2004 Nokia phone, but it has a certain kind of camp fun about it.

3/10.

It is a very daunting task taking on more than one skill working on a movie, with Sam Qualiana writing, starring, shooting and directing. Sometimes that can work, on other occasions it doesn't, sadly Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Shark falls into the latter. It does try but everything just looked and felt like it was made in one big rush.

The movie does look awful, it has a very drab and crude colour palette and it looks like it was shot on an unsteady hand-held mobile phone the entire time. Even worse was the special effects on the shark, to say that its crude puppet-like look looks fake is an insult to the word fake. The music throughout is one constant overly-loud and monotonous drone, while the worst of the repetitive and weakly structured script is horrendously stilted and the story- doing nothing with a done to death premise- felt very padded out and thin. Apparently according to one external review Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast was initially intended as a short film and it really does show in the execution of the story here. There's nothing interesting or likable about the characters, they are little more than stock cardboard cut-outs who do little and when they do something it comes across as annoying and predictable. The shark is no better, outside of how bad it looks it also exudes no personality or menace and the non-existent way the characters and actors react to their predicaments hinders it further. We know next to nothing about it either or its origins- despite executing it badly at least Avalanche Sharks tried to do that- and never once did it feel like it was a proper threat and we all knows that sharks are scary.

Regarding the shark attacks, they are completely devoid of suspense and terror with in almost all of them the shark only shown briefly(and it's in the attacks actually when the shark looks the most like a puppet). Pretty much all you can see is the sprayed tomato-ketchup-like blood cheapened even more by the seizure-inducing camera work. A further reason why Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast is for me down there as among the worst shark movies is that you get no entertainment value from it whatsoever, shark movies like Sharktopus and Sharknado had novelty value and while far from great movies(guilty pleasures more like) they had a sense of goofy fun, know what tone to take and even poked fun at themselves with everyone playing along. But Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast didn't have that, I know you should not expect much from low-budget movies like this and not take things so seriously but it's difficult to do that when the movie itself makes the mistake of taking it too seriously.

With Sam Qualiana's direction, he is to be admired for his ambition but his direction did feel very mundane and erratic, a good idea in the future(as a suggestion this is) is to take on less because it did feel like Qualiana was trying to take on too many things and had yet to have the experience to do so properly. The acting is very weak from everybody involved; they just looked bored and un-rehearsed. Especially bad are Andy Taylor who is incredibly irritating and CJ Qualiana who already has a morose character and plays him in a constantly one-note way. If there were any redeeming values they were the lovely scenery, which we would appreciate even more if the photography was better than it was, and the reasonably good sound quality. Other than that, overall Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast tries hard but its execution is embarrassingly bad. 1/10 Bethany Cox

I adore B-grade shark movies, but this doesn't even come close to qualifying as B-grade. While not the absolute worst shark movie I have ever seen (that distinction goes to House Shark), it was pretty close.

The film's speed was off - more 'daytime soap' than 'movie', the dialogue was dreadful, and the lead actor's acting was atrocious. Surprisingly, and the acting of some of the support actors was actually passable.

After the first two minutes it was pretty easy to guess... I bet this is one of those where the writer, director, producer, and 'star' are all the same person. Yup. And half the cast are family. The rest are probably friends, girlfriends, or old college roommates.

Making this movie was probably a fun way for a bored group of family and friends to fill in some time, but the same certainly can't be said for watching it. If you really need something to fill in your time, try banging your head against a wall - it will probably be less painful than watching this.

I'm trying to find anything positive in this movie but they've done a very good work at making it awful.

The acting of every single actor is bad, and not in the way you can enjoy by having fun of them, they are just boring.

The attacks of the snow shark are just horrible. Most of them are just the victim screaming and a blood stain in the snow, but the thing goes worse when they show the shark briefly and you discover that is a puppet.

I was hoping to see at least lots of blood and guts but don't count of it, there is a few blood in every attack but nothing remarkable.

If you really want to see a snow shark then I guess this is your movie but don't expect too much.