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
