Sharknado

I only wish this movie had been released to Drive-In theaters and been promoted on a twin bill with any other low rent/grade/brow cinematic masterpiece from the ill human beings at SyFy.

To paraphrase Elvis Costello- I just don't know where to begin.. Wooden acting, special effects from a Midwestern middle school science fair, a script that veers wildly from insipid to bizarre to total nonsense, actors that should face summary execution if they made only scale and still cashed their paychecks, a director that makes Ed Wood look like Ingmar Bergman. In other words a glorious triumph of B-grade movie making..

As you take in the visceral train wreck (that could only be better if released in grainy 8mm), you are reminded of what good/bad scifi is. Absolute suspension of disbelief, pure enjoyment of the insanity of it all, and a curious thought that you could not enjoy life more if you were shotgunned Thai sticks by Godzilla himself..

It is the generic Twinkie of B movies. Made all the better by the fact that it IS a cheap, sickeningly self indulgent wad of fluff that you feel doubly guilty of consuming.

God help me I do love it so....

While I give this one star, I strongly encourage everyone to see this movie. Not because it is good or has a single redeeming factor, but because if Ed Wood set out intentionally with an unlimited budget to make the worst movie ever, he could not have made something this bad.

The law of large numbers would seem to imply that in 86 minutes you'd have to get something right by accident, and yet this movie doesn't. A second look at Alien Apocalypse (which admittedly requires a masochistic nature to undertake) at least reveals passable cinematography and consistent lighting. And yet Sharknado rises above mathematics to give us a film that is bad in every single possible way.

Continuity is shrugged off completely. The same scene moves from daylight to dusk, rain to sunshine, storm surge to quiet beach, with every single new camera angle. It is so blatantly bad you are distracted from the more subtle inconsistencies like objects moving around, attire, wind, or quality of film from one cut to the next.

If you manage to close your eyes you are immediately taken in by the sound. How the sound editor managed to get to work on what had to be an acid-enhanced bender of epic proportions to warrant these results is beyond me. I'm reluctant to suggest using your stereo's sound-leveling technology for fear your sound system will simply melt from the strain.

One is almost loath to point a finger at suspension of disbelief when it comes to a movie whose premise is sharks in tornadoes, but whatever level you plan to come in with is almost surely going to fall far short. This movie has more WTF moments in 86 minutes than Lost could pull off in 86 seasons. And everyone gets to play, not just those with a working knowledge of wind shear or the physics that keep a helicopter in the air. If you've played pool, fished, surfed, driven a car in water deeper than two inches, been exposed to gravity, or otherwise in any way have interacted with or gained some understanding of the world around you, this movie has something for you to go "wha!?!" about.

And while you would think that once you had bad special effects, bad editing, and bad sound strung together you'd get at least one Bruce Campbell out of the cast to latch on to. Not so here, as every actor turned in a performance that shows they were more confused than the viewer about what was happening. We could guess it was because they were given the script out of order, but as a viewer of the final product I'm not sure I've seen the scenes in order, they are that disjointed.

I've tried very hard to find something that was done well or noteworthy about this movie and the only thing I can come up with is that it is the only movie I have ever seen that has failed on absolutely every level. If you tried to make a movie this bad you would inadvertently get something right purely on accident. And that is its one bright, shining point of light. That it would be almost impossible to make something this terrible ever again.

Instead of frequently used movie adjectives such as "Riveting," or "Unbelievable," the "Sharknado" billboard uses the descriptive words, "Enough Said." I don't know why but these words make me laugh, and they set the tone for this ridiculously silly movie. I love scary movies when the enemy is not a real threat to me or any other movie watcher. Therefore, I don't watch stalker or slasher movies.

There are sharks coming from every direction when they're catapulted into the sky by a freak storm that carries them everywhere. No place is safe.

Common sense is rarely used in this type of movie. I'll admit that "The Birds" is in a different league, but I always wonder why no one thinks to wear a hat that could deter at least some of the birds for awhile, especially a construction hat or football helmet. In Sharknado the sharks are vicious and hungry. Why no one in this movie can get away from these sharks baffles me. There are so many that its easy to get pelted by one. Pelted and then chewed, even swallowed. No one seems to remember that sharks can't walk or run on the land. Once they land on the ground, they would be stuck without rushing water to move them along.. Our hero---played by Ian Ziering---and his family and friends must take a proactive approach to fight these big fish while waiting for the torrential storms to pass.

This movie has some great foreshadowing. You can predict that certain characters will not be around much longer. But who cares? If you don't mind watching people get dismembered, or even swallowed, you may enjoy this movie as much as I did.

Let me just say that I watched this movie to be entertained—not enthralled or hanging on the edge of my seat but just distracted and carefree for a couple of hours. I got what I wanted. Only, I didn't expect to laugh so much. I'm thankful for the laughter, though, because it kept at bay any sort of aesthetic sense that might have interfered with my viewing pleasure.

Regardless of genre, most movies are a construction of thoughtfully planned scenes, each of which presenting plot points and character motivations that, together, form a plausible narrative, allowing for the proverbial "suspension of disbelief." Such careful craftsmanship is never more important than at a film's beginning. The creators of Sharknado didn't bother with any of that.

There is an opening sequence involving a fishing boat on a stormy sea. On board a greedy captain in a raincoat and an Asian man in a three- piece suit squabble about money (presumably for some nefarious service performed by the captain). Handguns are soon brandished, bullets are fired, and chomping sharks are washed on deck by the waves (à la The Perfect Storm). People are shot or eaten, and a massive water spout filled with digitally-rendered sharks stretches into the sky. Then the opening credits begin rolling, and it's as if that scene never happened. Other than the brief preview of the "sharknado" to come at the end of the second act (yes, I'm taking some liberties by using standard film vernacular to describe this storyline), it was as if this scene was jumbled together from leftover footage of some other SyFy shark movie. Did this bother me? Nope. In fact, it wasn't until after the movie's end that I even remembered the ship's captain and the shootout on the water. By then, I was still grinning too much to care.

One grin-evoking moment occurs when Nova, the leading female character played by Cassie Scerbo, stabs a shark to death with a cue stick in a bar. While this isn't the first shark encounter for the protagonists or even the first shark-on-land encounter, it does seem to set the tone for the rest of the movie. Anthony Ferrante, the director, wants everyone to realize that this is not—and does not aspire to be—Jaws.

Though he need not worry about anyone mistaking this shark movie for Steven Spielberg's classic, Ferrante repeatedly makes references to it. I won't use terms such as "allusion" or even "homage" to describe these references. Perhaps "farcical" might be more appropriate, or maybe "comic relief," but even those terms lend themselves to a more contemplative critique than I am attempting.

I think Ferrante's purpose was to preemptively counter all would-be critics who might say things like "This is no Jaws." He could have just titled the movie Another Killer Shark Film That Is Not Jaws. But that would have been too self-effacing and certainly not as much fun.

In carrying out this strategy, Ferrante doesn't waste much time. Moments after the sharks begin plopping onto the streets and docks, Fin—a bar-owner, father and former pro-surfer played by Ian Ziering of Beverly Hills, 90210 fame—makes quick work of one by shooting a diver's air tank that is jutting out of its gullet, causing it and the shark to explode. Remind you of anything? Yep, there's even a corny one-liner: "That's what you get for trying to eat me."

Later we have a quasi-touching expository scene that reveals Nova's pre-established hatred of sharks. The character of Fin's son, Matt, played by Chuck Hittinger, notices an unusual scar on Nova's thigh. To get her to talk about it, he lifts up his shirt and reveals a scar on his abdomen and explains its not-so-dramatic origin. When he asks Nova how she got her scar, she says she had a tattoo removed. Not buying it, Matt prods further and Nova tells a story about going fishing with her grandfather and his friends when she was a little girl. She says that their boat sank and sharks began to circle and attack them. The men managed to lift her out of the water and onto something floating nearby, but a shark still managed to take a hunk out of her leg. In summation, Nova says: "Six people went into the water and one little girl came out. The sharks took the rest."

The scene in Jaws in which Robert Shaw's character Quint tells the tale of the sinking of the USS Indionapolis is arguably one of the most memorable scenes in film history. Ferrante knows this. Nova's scar story, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, serves to again make the director's statement: "I am aware of Jaws, as is everyone in the civilized world, and this is not that movie!"

Later, this same point is made again, this time even more comically and pointedly. After fabricating some propane bombs, Nova and Matt take to the skies in a helicopter to hunt the tornadoes. Matt flies perilously close to one of the funnel clouds so that Nova can toss one of the bombs into it. She sees an enormous shark coming straight at them and declares: "We're gonna need a bigger chopper."

If you want to be moderately entertained, then I don't think you will be disappointed with Sharknado. Don't expect too much going into it—and bring with you a willingness to suspend your own sense of disbelief. Most important, keep in mind that this is not Jaws. I don't think that fact will slip you mind, however. The director made sure of it.

People seem to think that this is the be all end all of bad movies when in actuality the movie was made this way on purpose. The thing that separates a good bad movie from a bad bad movie is intent. Take The Room for example. When Tommy Wiseau was making that movie, he had the best intentions and really thought that it was going to be a great movie. This is what makes it so satisfying to watch this movie. Wiseau put a lot of time and effort into it and it was utter crap. Sharknado was made to be dumbed down to reach their target audience and make them feel smarter than the movie. You can't point and laugh at the director because this is what he wanted all along. What makes a film "So bad it's good" is sincerity. Movies like Machete or Sharknado or the latest Asylum Mockbuster are either intentionally shitty or crass cash-grabs. Great terrible movies like the Room, Miami Connection, and Birdemic are completely sincere and honest in there awfulness, and that's what makes them special. Sharknado is just ruining the experience of bad movies for people. All in all, if you truly are interested in bad movies, I recommend you watch something like Troll 2 or Miami Connection. Then again, what do I know? I'm just some asshole on the internet.