Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast

Okay, this isn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but really had to force myself to watch the entire thing. I lost interest two minutes into the movie.

Dialogue- stilted, off putting, uninteresting and flat. Characters- no real depth, these characters weren't even two dimensional, they were inverted. No on screen chemistry, talent or engaging characters to relate to. No one to cheer far.

Cinematography- Horrible, the color saturation was horrid. It's as if it was shot from a cell phone. Actually, I've got to correct myself, i've seen better movies that were shot from an iPhone.

This was just horrible all across the board. Acting, dialogue, characters, story, plot, execution/delivery of the story, no character arcs, nothing interesting.

I actually enjoyed cute cat videos on youtube more than this.

I imagine it was shot with a couple of friends, a couple of dollars and only a couple of hours, including the editing, retakes, and everyone's shooting schedule.

what a piece of crap.

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.

12 years ago during a scientific expedition 3 animal biologists stumbled upon a great discovery that ended in tragedy.

Whatever killed them has awoken and now the legend of the Ancient Snow Beast could prove to be more than just a legend.

Well we know from like frame one what killed them cuz we see it.

I', surprised at reviews that say this is the worst movie ever. No way. Is it good? We that's relative. Low budget means it's not gonna be great. But it's really sort of funny and watchable.

And I don't think it's meant to be taken seriously. Plus, I've seen far worse acting in these kinds of movies.

It won't change your life, but it's watchable. And you will get a few laffs throughout.

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

Needless to say that I was not harboring a single expectation to this movie. I mean, a movie that is written by, directed by and starring the one and the same person is usually a questionable affair. And with a title such as "Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast", there were no doubt that this would be a questionable movie. But still, I opted to watch it, on account of it being a shark movie that I hadn't already seen.

Needless to say that I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and that was actually something that spoke in favor of the movie. The acting performances weren't actually all that shabby for a movie such as this.

The editing in the movie was insanely shoddy, but then again why wouldn't it be? Mark Polonia was involved in the editing, and he is the guy behind a heap of really, really questionable shark movies.

The effects in the movie were not great, but at least they weren't as bad as what you get in the movies written and directed by Mark Polonia. The sounds that the shark was making was just so insanely poor. It was beyond laughable that they opted to make the shark sound that way.

Sure, "Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast" was not a great movie, but there are far, far worse shark movies out there, even of a newer date.

My rating of "Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast" lands on a three out of ten stars.