Megalodon

This better-than-average effort reminds me of those old 50s style B movie sci-fi monster flicks because there's a well-developed and interesting story with good acting, that has a gradual build to the eventual release and attack of the Megalodon. Not boring in the least while it builds to the climax, except perhaps for those viewers whose attention span is short or who have been weened on horror flicks that are long on mayhem and short on plot. I consider this a valiant effort, with it's only weakness being the limited, but well-done, CGI effects. Overall, it has the look of a larger budget and the cast of unknowns took their work seriously.

At only an hour and a half, it's not a bad little flick. The acting is satisfying, there's a few good one-liners, the visual effects (all CGI, and well done considering the tiny team that did them) aren't distracting enough to detract from things, and the story was plotted and played out decently. Obviously could have been more with a bigger budget, but that's a truism for all indie productions. The small handful of makeup effects were especially well done.

The only nitpick I have is with the sound mix. In some places the dialoge can be difficult to make out, but nothing a quick rewind-replay and a closer listen won't clear up.

6 1/2 or 7 out of 10, considering it does better than some Hollywood efforts (Deep Blue Sea, anybody?).

Megadolon is more a mediocre movie than a terrible one. It is also at least better than the Shark Attack movies(then again almost anything is), now those are examples of terrible movies. There are things to like, the acting is decent especially from Mark Sheppard, there are some nice underwater sequences, there is one cool attack scene and much of the CGI is not bad(the helicopter crash agreed was an exception), not great but could have been worse. Also the movie doesn't fall into the dull category, the pace is quite brisk and there are glimpses of great entertainment. Megadolon is let down by a number of things. The standard of the CGI was better than expected, but there could have been much less of it at the same time. The editing has times where it's hurried and others where it's sloppy, the dialogue at best is a load of exposition and cornball and the characters are shallow and development is next to nil. The story is not badly paced, but it is very predictable and the suspense and horror is severely lacking(they're exchanged with unintentional comedy, some of which is funny but others are frustrating), and the repetitive attack scenes and anticlimactic and quite ridiculous ending hinder it further. The shark is a very mixed bag design wise, there are times where it has a very menacing great white shark look but there are other times where it is like an over-sized plastic toy you'd find in the bathroom(coming from someone who used to have one, it could sing too!). The lack of personality is a big problem, there was definitely a big effort to make it authentic but generally it needed to be more fearsome and have more variety in movement and how it reacted to things. Overall, mediocre but did have its merits. 4/10 Bethany Cox

It's easy to pick on MEGALODON and call it a bad movie. It's not original, it lacks a bit suspense every now and then, the acting is just average and you can tell that the budget was low, to name only a few things. But if you manage to look beyond its mediocrity, you can see that the film-makers really tried to make it as decent as possible. And you can only appreciate that. Now , if it wasn't for CGI-technology, this movie simply would not have been made. Only the actors and a few sets were real, the rest all CGI. It looks real good most of the time(the helicopter in the beginning and the sailboat at the end,...) but sometimes it fails desperately (that same helicopter crashing on the platform).

You already know that this movie is about a prehistoric mega-shark rising from the depths and terrorizing the crew of an oil-rig. And with it's title being MEGALODON, I thought the mega-shark was considerably lame. There's only one fairly decent attack-scene when he bursts through the ice. Decent in terms of that he finally does something. The rest of its screen time you see him swimming around bumping into things. Well at least they didn't make him roar or something. And the explosion at the end was ridiculous: They just disappeared!? But still, this movie never becomes really boring, 'cause the CGI frequently provides nice images to look at, with the 'cave-exploring'-sequence being a good example (nice glowing flubbery creatures). There are a few other shots worth mentioning. They're pretty pointless, but stylish. It was when they showed that smaller dinosaur-fish with the sharp teeth. The creature-designer actually made a real good-looking sculpture (no CGI) for this one.

I admit, to some MEGALODON may not live up to its humble 4-star-rating, but I think you should at least appreciate the effort the film-makers made for trying to make it work. And even if it can't compete with most of the underwater-creature-flicks, it still is way better than that Casper Van Dien SHARK ATTACK-tripe.

Usually shark movies are fairly horrible, much like most zombie movies. And "Megalodon" is not really an exception from the standards of shark movies. It has everything you expect it would; fake shark and bad CGI effects. Check and check.

The story in "Megalodon" is about an oil drilling company which has built a massive rig which will revolutionize the oil drilling business. Being capable of drilling at depths which are previously unreachable, then they invoke the anger of environmentalists. Whilst drilling at over 5000 feet, they find a massive subterranean underwater cave which has a myriad of previously undiscovered aquatic creatures. But living in the cave is a massive Carcharodon megalodon.

While the story is straight forward and fairly generic for a movie of this genre, then the movie actually turned out to be semi-alright, in terms of being watchable and providing some entertainment for the audience. However, it just was bludgeoned to death by horrible CGI effects and fairly bad acting.

The concept idea for the drilling rig was quite good, and they managed to show it in a fairly adequate manner, although the CGI effects could have been better. And the combination of CGI effects and real props did work out well enough in favor of the movie.

While on the topic of effects, then I will admit that the luminescent aquatic creature designs were really impressive and looked really good on the screen. So thumbs up to the CGI special effects team on this achievement.

"Megalodon" has no one familiar on the cast list, and I can't really claim that people were doing great jobs with their given roles and characters. Now, whether this was the fault of the restrictive script or the talents (or lack thereof) of the actors, I do not know.

"Megalodon" is not an impressive movie in any way, and it is the type of movie that you watch once and laugh about it, then never put it back in your movie player again. For a shark movie, then this movie was lacking action, shark attacks and the sense of fear, that we saw in "Jaws", for example.