"Sharknado"... NO!

A few months ago this movie was brought to my attention on Facebook. Humorously, a friend provided a link to a movie that was seeking distribution during the festival circuit. The movie poster promises insane silliness, especially considering the tag line is "Enough said!" With a poster that features great white sharks spinning around in a tornado, I was a little skeptical of the film's merits. But, that same friend requested a full review, including the velocity required to pull so many sharks out of the sea. Unfortunately for us both, the film fails to deliver the goods.

I was looking forward to the silly shenanigans afoot in the film. Hell, one of my favorite past times with my dad is dissecting the absurdities found in cheesy sci-fi films. We even do that with the good ones. The fun of watching a terrible movie is making fun of it. Just look at the Twilight movies; those are a riot. From the reviews and the advanced press, Sharknado promised to be the type of silly entertainment my dad and I would enjoy watching together.

And so, with bated breath, Tim and I prepared ourselves for a truly awful movie. Tim wasn't nearly as prepared for the horror of cinema he was about to watch. We settled ourselves onto the couch and cued up the DVR. There it was... Sharknado... just as they promised. A preposterous title, with an even more preposterous story. This was going to be great.

In my head, I was imagining sharks flying everywhere, something like a cross between Night of the Twisters and Jaws 3, with special effects so terrible that the filmmakers had to have known what they were doing. Sharknado promised to be a self-parody of disaster movies, a film that didn't take itself too seriously. And with a premise like that, how could they?

The first shot was actually pretty cool. Across a dark sea, shark fins, hundreds of them, pierce the surface of the water as the sharks attempt--or are they?--to flee the oncoming storm. And in the distance, a tornado bears down on the school of sharks.

It's a great start. But the budget of the film and all its creativity seems to have been used up in the first shot. Pity.

Los Angeles is facing an unprecedented hurricane. And in the midst of this unprecedented storm is a very familiar story: estranged father reconnects with his ex-wife and children while trying to save them. Naturally, my first reaction to all the melodrama was this: "There are sharks flying through windows!" How can anyone be concerned with who is doing what to whom when sharks are swimming through the streets, flying through the air, and causing mayhem everywhere, even in Beverly Hills? 

But, that's a small problem. There are larger issues to be dealt with, for example, the film's complete disregard for its own absurdities. If the script had been wittier, more self-referential, more aware of its craziness, I could have forgiven the bad filmmaking. I could have forgiven the fact that the film was filmed in daylight, hoping that the grey filters and infrequent rain would be enough to confuse us. That was probably intentional, but the characters never seem to recognize that this is one odd hurricane, even more odd than the flying sharks. The hurricane doesn't act like a hurricane. The rain and wind are sporadic. Now, I've never been through a hurricane, but it's my understanding that the rain and wind don't stop, not unless you're in the middle of the storm's eye or the storm has passed. However, I may be wrong on this. Florida friends, help me out!

Sharknado's actual antagonist is boredom. Here I was hoping to see sharks flying all over the place with twenty, fifty, possibly hundreds of tornadoes, and the filmmakers only gave us four. FOUR! That's it?! That's what I waited months for? A measly four tornadoes. What a rip off! I suffered through terrible special effects, subpar attempts at humor, characterizations and plot developments that insulted the actors, and all for what... four tornadoes. Ugh!

When the heroes of the film finally (FINALLY) found themselves facing true "sharknadoes" it was too late. I had given up, even when the characters suggested that bombs could defuse the tornadoes. I was despondent and furious. Even that couldn't make me laugh. Awful thing to watch what promises to be a terrible movie, and it turns out only to be a terrible movie. I was hoping for more. I was hoping for the absurdity to reach epic proportions.

And that's exactly what the filmmakers gave me. (Spoiler Warning! Like any of you are actually going to see this...) One character, in her attempt to destroy the final tornado, falls from a helicopter and is swallowed whole by a shark. The scene is funny... But wait! It gets even better.

As the terror is over and sharks are falling from the sky, the hero sees his daughter threatened by a falling shark. He runs, wielding a chainsaw, pushes her out the way and leaps into the maw of the shark. Like his friend, he is swallowed whole. All is lost.

But no, what's that sound? Is that the sound of a chainsaw? Why, yes, it is. The hero is not so dead after all. He is cutting his way through the innards of the shark.

When the chainsaw cut its way through the shark fell onto the ground, Tim said, "Naturally birth: That's some terrifying shit!" Indeed, I was thinking about the same thing. 

Wait, the hero is going back inside the shark. What is he doing? You know what he's doing. He's pulling out the woman who had been swallowed earlier. A quick round of CPR and she's saved.  

Tim just stares at the screen, open mouthed, and I can't stop laughing. At the end, when all hope is lost, Sharknado finally delivers on the potential presented in the poster and opening shot. However, it was too late. Even on the level of so-awful-it's-good, I cannot recommend this movie with a clean conscience. If you do want to see the good bad stuff, simply skip to the final half hour of the film. Or find the ending on YouTube. I'm sure someone posted it. 

I, for one, will have to wipe clean the stains this film left on the walls of my consciousness. Maybe Caligula is out there somewhere... Or even Howard the Duck... Then again, no. Sharknado isn't THAT bad.