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....

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.

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.

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.

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.