Shark Week

To be fair, I only got to see the last 40 minutes, but that was enough to make this one of the absolute WORST movies I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of really stinky movies, mostly by Asylum, but all the classic stinkers too like Manos).

Patrick Bergin and Yancy Butler (who seems to have a nervous eye flutter) play a psycho couple who live in a giant mansion but spend most of their time in what appears to be a broom closet decked out with some lap tops and not-so-big video screens. They are forcing some none-too-bright people to make their way through deadly shark encounters which all look like they can be easily be avoided by simply NOT GOING WHERE THE SHARKS ARE.

There's also some land mines on a beach that are easily seen and can be outrun once they start exploding but are handy for carrying with you in case you have to hang onto a stalagmite while fending off a really hideous CG shark.

Calling the acting wooden is an insult to wood. The music is incessantly wrong for the "action" and the direction and editing are hilarious (lots of scenes of people walking and emoting for no apparent reason).

But it is a hoot to make fun of while you're watching it. I hope that all involved get better at what they're doing or find other lines of work.

Novel idea features an eccentric worry-bead clutching millionaire who subjects a group of people to a perverted game in which they're hunted down by sharks to atone for the death of his son. Irish former leading man Bergin unfortunately has little to do but look intermittently distant or crazed, as he monitors the group's movements via CCTV. How he knows where to position the cameras - and the fact that they appear to move - is but one of the many questions this film prompts you to consider. Apart from Bergin, the only faces I recognised was Coker (who appears in other films by The Asylum), and Butler playing Bergin's highly aggressive girlfriend.

Abysmal CGI effects although there does appear to be at least one rubber shark if that makes any difference, most of the action occurs between the characters as the emerging friction causes tension and poor decision making leading to inevitable results. The poor sap in the Gucci flip flops who hands his fellow castaways shark teeth with which to make spears they'll use to defend themselves against the sharks is both a touching gesture, and a predictably feeble one as we soon discover.

Some of the situations imagined for Bergin's 'obstacle course' are vaguely interesting, but most are just hackneyed and repetitive taking place in a darkened cave. Puerile dialogue and continuity/ editing issues (note the constantly changing footwear worn by some of the cast, or the overhead power lines on the supposedly remote island) even if you're a shark attack movie devotee, 'Shark Week' is comically bad and one to avoid.

Shark Week (2012)

** (out of 4)

Everyone's favorite studio, The Asylum, is back with their latest offering. A madman (Patrick Bergin) kidnaps the eight people he blames for his son's death and forces them to play a game. The game is that they must enter various stages where they have to fight a different breed of shark. SHARK WEEK comes from director Christopher Ray who had previously done 2-HEADED SHARK ATTACK so he's really putting his name on the genre. As for as films from The Asylum go, this here is probably one of the best from the studio but that's still not saying too much. I think the story here was actually a fairly interesting one, although there's no doubt that the producers were ripping off the SAW franchise and the Bergin character really comes across as a weak Jigsaw replacement. The story works for the most part because it's rather funny seeing humans having to battle sharks and it leads to some of the dumbest moments in any film I've seen this year. Just check out the various ways they try to fight the sharks and it leads to a really crazy final sequence against a Great White. Bergin really hams it up here but this is a good thing because his over-the-top performance at least makes you smile. The eight "players" don't feature Oscar-worthy performances but they're at least what you'd expect from a film like this. There are several problems with the film including the awful special effects. The effects are so bad but this is to be expected in a film like this. I understand they can't afford top-notch special effects but if this is the best you can do then there's no point of making a film because every time the sharks are on screen you really get taken out of the action because of how fake they look. Another problem is that out of the eight characters there's really no one to cheer for so you never really get caught up in their survival. Still, fans of "C" creature features should at least be entertained.

For The Asylum, Shark Week is not their worst or quite awful enough to be one of them. That doesn't stop it though from being a complete failure in every area, and that's even when you know what to expect. Some of the locations are nice and exotic but others also look as though they were shot in a run-down warehouse or basement. That cheap look is made even worse by the choppy editing and terrible special effects. If you've seen the quality of the sharks in other Asylum or SyFy movies that are similar, it's pretty much the same in Shark Week, the sharks are so cheaply rendered and not only don't look real but they don't look natural in their surroundings. They also don't have any personality either, which severely dilutes any terror or tension, the actors don't even look all that terrified when really the situation would be scary for anybody. The music is at a very sluggish tempo especially in the scenes containing action, the scoring of the build-ups to the attacks is predictable. The dialogue has always been one of the weakest aspects of an Asylum movie, and there is no change here as this is very cheesy and stilted scripting. And you don't connect with any of the characters, as with everything else Shark Week doesn't give time to develop them or you the time to properly root for them. The story just doesn't seem to have any life, Shark Week is very poorly paced throughout, the action shows the worst of the editing and lifeless choreography and the shark attacks suffer from a complete lack of tension and visual cheapness, if you're expecting to be afraid of going into seas now you won't get that vibe. It also seemed rather tame, you'd expect a crossover of Saw and Jaws to have a similar impact to those movies but here it feels like Saw but without the harrowing violence and Jaws without the eerie nail-biting suspense. The acting is very bad too, Patrick Bergin and Yancy Butler are far too over-the-top and don't make any effort to reign in and give their characters depth or any quality that makes you connect with them. While the acting of victims are wooden with nobody seeming to properly care about whether they lived or died. Overall, dull, cheap and not much fun at all, more avoided than recommended. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Awakening to find themselves trapped on an island, a group learns they are to be subjected to a series of encounters with the host's collection of deadly, ravenous sharks to be able to leave the area alive.

Overall this one was an absolutely terrible killer shark film that really has so little going for it that it's almost unwatchable. The biggest issue with this one comes from its idea of utilizing the creatures as obstacles that must be overcome by the group in order to survive to the next trap, effectively rendering them into a state equal to a Torture Film set-up. It's basically turning the film and the creatures into a simple slasher effort only replacing the species as it's sharks instead of a human killer which is so insulting to their existence that it effectively kills whatever fear they might have as the end result robs their specialness in the most ludicrous way possible. This basically keeps the film running along into a singular mode here because every single set-up is the same thing only done in a different cave with different sharks so the results are incredibly underwhelming. Another problem here is that the idea for the madman's scheme for revenge is so laughable that it's impossible to think it's meant to be taken seriously and really makes this one quite a challenge to even get into the concept for the film. Beyond this, another big problem here is the whole affair is mired in a series of sloppy, utterly atrocious CGI effects that are utterly terrible by having such an obstruction of the action with their rampant blurriness and darkness due to being filmed in pitch-black that they're almost impossible to make out and have no lasting impact. These here are the film's flaws which are enough to really lower this one down significantly enough that the positives here are barely even registered. What does seem to work here is the near continuous action present as this one goes about the encounters in a quick enough fashion that there's enough to keep from being bored along the way. There's a few really exciting ambushes in the caves along the way here that do rely on some ingenuity to escape, and these here go get really bloody and brutal as well which get quite exciting. As well, it does have some great pains involved in laying out the mystery and trying to get it going, as this does take a while to get the point of what they're doing rather nicely. Beyond this, there's nothing else in this worthwhile.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.