Créature

I recommend doing several loads of laundry, and then folding it while watching this movie. I actually don't mean that in a bad way. It is a mildly entertaining, if overly long, 3 hours or so.

As you can tell from the very mixed reviews, whether one likes this movie might depend on your mood and your willingness to suspend disbelief and take Creature on its own terms. As other reviewers have noted, this is Peter Benchley ripping off himself in subpar manner. On the other hand, the creature is kind of cool, there are some really nifty sets, including abandoned tunnels, abandoned laboratories, abandoned military facilities, foggy swamps, and mysterious, shark tooth-shaped Islands silhouetted against the full moon, and for the most part the acting is more than adequate. Taking it for what it is, I would give it 5 1/2 or 6 Stars.

Note, regarding the DVD: As of this writing, 2019, Amazon was selling a 2-disc DVD set released by Olive Films, for around $12. The picture is excellent, surprisingly detailed and crisp, and presented in the original 1:78 widescreen. The sound is also very clear. Unfortunately, and unforgivably, there is no closed captioning. Not surprisingly, there are no special features. I do like the fact that it is presented with parts 1 and 2 each on its own DVD (labeled Night 1 and Night 2, which is kind of neat), so compression ratios are fine. I also appreciated the fact that they presented each part in its entirety, including opening and closing credits, unlike, for instance, the commonly found DVD release of Salem's Lot, which eliminated closing credits of part 1 and opening credits of part 2, combining it into one feature.

I rented this in the local video store since it was based on a Peter Benchley (Jaws) book. I didn't know it was a mini TV series but once it was started, it kept me in front of the TV till the end. Craig T. Nelson delivers an excellent performance and it has got some pretty decent creature effects by Stan Winston. The plot is somewhat like Deep Blue Sea. The Navy performs experiments on Dolphins but something goes wrong and one of the test subject escapes. It reappears 25-30 years later (how old do dolphins get??) and starts spreading terror. Better than your average action movie, I rated it 6/10.

Plot

An amphibious shark-like monster terrorizes an abandoned secret military base and the people who live on the island it is located on. A marine biologist, as well as several other people, try to stop it before it is too late...

Cast

Craig T. Nelson, Kim Cattrall, Blu Mankuma, Giancarlo Esposito, Megalyn Echikunwoke and a very wasted Colm Feore star.

Verdict

Let's be fair here, you can't expect too much from a shark feature especially these days. Scyfy have officially killed sharks for me, from multi headed sharks to ghost shark to snow shark to sand shark to flying sharks to toxic sharks to zombie sharks and beyond!

Creature presents us with something that's essentially a man shark, half man, half shark, all pretty terrible.

Now the first thing I need to acknowledge is that this isn't technically a movie, it's a two part limited series. The thing is, that was their first and arguably biggest mistake. In no universe did this need to be three hours! It's excessive runtime is very very damaging and turns a mediocre creature feature into a boring needlessly drawn out mess.

The cast are fine and I certainly see what they were going for, but it looks ugly, the writing is poor and it all feels like a low budget made for television movie but one that has no business being as long as it is.

Rants

Is it just me or did Kim Cattrall have a considerably better career than she by all rights should have being that she's really not a very good actress. Look at everything she's been in, the decade after decade and she's always had her place in the industry yet I don't remember seeing a roll where I thought wow she nailed it there!

The Good

Solid cast Megalyn Echikunwoke

The Bad

The "Creature" looks naff Some weak writing FAR too long Just uninspired and generic throughout.

I knew when I first started to look at this, that I would probably compare it to "Jaws" pretty much from the begining. I wasn't wrong. As others here have said there are a lot of similarities here.

Yet, it started out as a decent monster flick but became worse by every minut. Add the fact that the "creature" looks ridiculously stupid and you have it.

Nothing that haven't been seen before.

4/10

Movie-Man

I managed to miss (purposely) this 'movie' when it originally aired and I should have heeded my own warning.

Someone said this movie was a 'gem'.. well, some gems need to be re-buried and covered by 48 billion tons of rock. I was saddened to see how the once semi-popular stars Craig T. Nelson (the Poltergeist series, Coach) and Kim Catrall (Sex in the City, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country) had waded into the dismal abyss of c-grade films. This film has it all, a dull plot, terrible acting, REALLY cheap effects. Wow... A shark that can walk. I remember the unfunny cartoon with the same premise: Jabberjaw, from way back in the 70's. The biggest difference is we were SUPPOSED to laugh at Jabberjaw.

Something tells me that Nelson was the real loser in this affair since some people can't recover from a somewhat tepid career after a run of moderate successes. Catrall is a decent actress, at least she had a longtime stint on the beforementioned 'Sex in the City', which is currently in reruns. The crazy islander / former lab technician looked like he'd sniffed about one too many tubes of Testor's Model Glue or worked in a factory that manufactures Sharpie's. The 'creature' was incredibly bad, which made it difficult to buy into the whole premise.

I'll save my time and not even comment on Creature 2, because I turned it off about 5 minutes into it. I'm at the point at wondering if the Sci-Fi Channel's budget is so meager it can't afford to show a decent A OR B-list film, they're even worse at making their own productions.