Sharknado

When I saw this glorious film on the esteemed syfy network, I knew they had another massive, award winning hit that would get snubbed out of any award ceremonies. Now, time to be serious. I assumed Tara Reid was dead. Didn't even know she was alive so I was shocked to see her in this movie. Sharknado was like a cluster f word of things that didn't make sense. It was so bad that I couldn't stop watching this train wreck of a movie. Bad cgi doesn't cut it. While it may not have been birdemic bad, but it wasn't much better. Watching the movie all the way through is what I am assuming a brain aneurism feels like. I am sad that I watched it.

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.

Sharknado, the hit SyFy Channel original has positioned itself as critic-proof, cheeseball goofiness incarnate. The entire enterprise is a joke. Sharknado knows it is a cheesy SyFy original movie, and it doesn't apologize for it. It is tongue-in-cheek, self aware, and sarcastic. "How can you criticize this movie?" some might ask, "It's supposed to be goofy!". Well goofiness is great if it is entertaining. Sharknado is not entertaining in the least.

I'll skip the credits, skip the plot and get right down to business, this movie is a crappy made-for-TV snooze-fest, starring D-list celebrities and made by inept "filmmakers" who seem to have trouble differentiating between endearingly cheesy and downright bad. Sharknado is "critic-proof" because of the assumption that viewing the movie critically would expose its cheesiness, which is intentional. However, the problem with Sharknado is not that it is silly, it's that it is boring.

The cast has no charm, the effects are in a dead zone between not bad enough to be funny, and not good enough to be convincing, the look of the film is murky and dull, and the action scenes are incomprehensible and poorly edited. Sharknado is an absolute bore. It is an example of how a critic-proof, self-aware, tongue-in-cheek cheesefest can still go horribly wrong. Yes, I "get" Sharknado. It is meant to be a dumb B-movie, I understand, but dumb fun does require more than just conscious stupidity. Sharknado is not entertaining, a flaw that will sink any movie, whether it has shark-filled tornadoes or not.

20/100

With a title like Sharknado, you expect weird. This movie delivers.

Grab some friends, lots of snacks, and a mammoth amount of suspension of disbelief. You're now ready for SyFy channel's latest escapade into the realm of the psychotically silly. This movie acts upon the mind like a mind altering substance, taking it to a land of shark-infested water spouts, science gone mad, absurd visuals, and movie making run amok. Riffing is optional; the movie is goofy and deranged either way.

A freak-storm turns into tornadoes/water spouts that vacuum up a zillion sharks that are swimming around and whisks them off to southern California. Some of the finny predators are pitched into local freeways and everywhere else, while other sharks continue to spin around in the hurricane. The sharks take no prisoners as they swim around soggy streets and wreak havoc with laughable CGI attacks. I did notice however that they obeyed all traffic laws while they swam through the streets.

This movie swims its way ever further into the realms of the jawbone dropping bizarre, with several key scenes to be on the lookout for. Look for the random one-in-a-million rescue near the end, and the wacky idea the heroes use to try and save the day. This sort of chaos is common throughout the entire movie.

Kudos to the movie makers for this pure unabashed nonsense.

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.