Sharkenstein

Sharkenstein (2016)

* (out of 4)

Towards the end of WWII a German scientist is working on a shark made from various shark parts. Nothing happens until the current times when a nut gets control of the shark and sends in on a killing spree.

SHARKENSTEIN is obviously a film that you shouldn't expect too much from. The title pretty much tells you what you're about to get into you and if you're expecting SyFy type of material then you've still got your expectations a bit too high. Some might find this mildly entertaining if you like really bad movies with awful monsters.

The CGI shark looks horrible but I'm really hoping the filmmakers knew this and purposely set loose a bad looking shark. It really does look like an ugly doll at times so I'm sure no one really expected it to scare people. In fact, my kid watched this and could tell something wasn't right with this shark. The CGI blood effects really aren't much better and there's no other bits of exploitation to make the film stand out.

As it stands, SHARKENSTEIN is pretty much a really bad movie but the badness of the shark brings some mild entertainment. The performances are pretty much bland, the characters silly and what plot is here isn't worth talking about.

I was initially intrigued by the somewhat interesting and nicely made movie cover for "Sharkenstein", but when I started to watch it I knew that this was going to be a stinker. It is hard to fathom that movies like this are still being made, and we are now writing 2016.

I made it 10 minutes into the movie before I was ready to end it all. I just gave up out of sheer hopelessness and a lack of will to go on. This movie was bad, unbelievably bad in every aspect.

The CGI animated shark was so poorly made that it was a literal eyesore to witness. And with CGI effects so poor, a creature feature is just doomed to fail horribly.

The acting in the movie was as to be expected. It was wooden, rigid and stiff at best. And from the 10 minutes I watched, then I just knew that there was not going to be anyone capable of salvaging this train wreck of a movie.

I will not be giving "Sharkenstein" a second chance, because there literally is nothing entertaining or worth wasting an hour and thirteen minutes on here. Sure, it had a really good movie cover, but it just proves that you can't judge a movie by its cover!

It is rare that I actually give up on a movie. Which just indicates that a movie has to be unfathomably horrible and boring, which was the case with "Sharkenstein".

Stay well clear of this one.

Where do I begin? First of all, there is an attractive and capable female lead (Greta Volkova) and her hunky friend Coop (Titus Himmelberger). Then there's a third wheel named Skip who seems out of place. Oh, and our "hero" is named Duke. And then there's a shark. Not just any shark. But "Sharkenstein," which is exactly what you think it is. Frankenstein's brain transplanted into a shark. Clever, huh? Sharkenstein features lots of stock footage, tons of aerial footage of beaches, aimless shots of a lifeguard with his back to the camera, lots of white men with hairy forearms, and a posse with guns running through trees sporting fall foliage. Only director Mark Polonia would call this a movie. And he appears uncredited as the mute driver of a boat (did he have to pay himself less for not speaking?). His character's name, Hoskins, is mentioned more times than any of the four principals. Oh, and our director/editor must have run short of Wild Eye Releasing's requisite 70 minute running time, because there is a completely random scene of a long-in-the-tooth "model" getting photographed. The scene is completely unrelated to the rest of the "movie." It appears to be inserted to pad out the running time. The mercifully short running time.

Of course there's bad acting and terrible cgi, what would you expect? I didn't expect one of the 3 kids to have gray hair, wearing his hat sideways to appear young and another to be a stripper in a one piece bathing suit acting like an intellectual prude. That helped distract me from the lack of story and action. There is a giant plot hole that I won't mention because I don't want to spoil it but over all it's exactly what you would expect from a movie with this name. I'm not sure why they say it's a comedy but I did laugh once.

I decided to give it a go, thinking it was going to be just another SYFY channel film that's cheesy but watchable, how the hell this got 3.7 stars is beyond me, I'd rather watch the contents of my daughters nappy. Unlike things like the "Mega Shark" films this has no redeeming qualities at all. It's filled with anachronisms like someone wearing Adidas trainers in 1942 among other things and the CGI was probably done on something like a commodore 64. Worse than the "special effects" is the acting. Seriously, it stinks so badly that I couldn't bear it any longer and turned off after 5 minutes. If you're thinking of watching this, save yourself the aggro. Any time you spend watching this rubbish is time you will never get back.