Sand Sharks (2012)

Welcome to the second installment in my SHARK ATTACK WEEK TRILOGY, where I'll be looking at 3 different shark movies to see how they stack up. The first one, "Shark Week" by The Asylum was pretty lame. What horrors from the deep await me next? Read on!

You know, there comes a time, every once in a while, when I have to admit to myself that I've seen way too many movies, and that I may have a problem. This thought occured to me while watching today's film, "Sand Sharks," a movie that was picked up solely for the premise.

I mean, come on. Look at that majesty on the DVD cover. A shark that swims in the sand? That is ingeniously stupid. But it became clear to me that I may have a problem when I began watching the movie and realized that it was the second film I've seen this year starring Brooke Hogan, daughter of Hulk. (Actually, her name sounds amazingly bad-ass when said in that fashion.)

She was the star of the Asylum Film, "2-Headed Shark Attack," which I reviewed earlier this year. Also of interest was the fact that "2-Headed Shark Attack" was also directed by Christopher Olen Ray, who directed yesterdays "Shark Week." And now, without meaning to, I'm watching another shark movie starring Brooke Hogan. I don't know whether to be amused at the smallness of the world, be impressed by my movie consumption, or simply cry myself to sleep over my wasted years.

I can see it now. My tombstone will read: "Here lies Patrick Jackson. He watched low-budget creature features starring the children of professional wrestlers." Classy. Can't wait to die.

Why couldn't I have Royal Tenenbaum's tombstone?

I'm going to cut to the chase with this one. "Sand Sharks," while not good, is a measurable step up from "Shark Week." The reason for this is that A) The production value is slightly higher, B) It's meant to be more of a comedy, and C) It's basically a ripoff of "Jaws" to the point of spoofing several iconic scenes. And while this mostly just made me roll my eyes, in theory if you were to perhaps slam your head in a car door several times and get a severe concussion, then blindfolded yourself and simply listened to the movie with earmuffs on while sticking your head under a pillow, it might be possible to pretend you were watching "Jaws." So that at least puts it up over "Shark Week," although the prep-work involved is a tad excessive.

So yeah, the movie is about sharks that can swim through the sand. They start by snacking on some bikers and random beach-goers before threatening to ruin a "huge" party that the mayor's douchebag son is trying to throw in order to generate much needed revenue for the island town. And just like "Jaws," despite early warning signs and deaths, the authorities refuse to close down the beaches on account of bad business practice.

Now, I said "huge" party because it's clear that "Sand Sharks" only had about 40 extras to use for the party scene, so there's never any wide establishing shots of the crowd, which is kind of annoying to watch because it's clear that if the camera were to scoot a mere inch to the left there would be only sand and air. Also you can see the same handful of people show up many times. This gives the impression that they can either teleport via camera edit, or that during the panicky running around scenes, they are simply running in circles like idiots.

Seems legit.

The funniest part about the party scenes, however, is the fact that you can clearly hear the same 2 guys doing ADR every time you see the crowd. And of course the mixing in the booth is far clearer than the sound they picked up on the beach, which makes it sound really artificial and canned. Just imagine watching "Beach Blanket Bingo" with a guy standing behind you saying "Yeah! Alright! This party's awesome! Wooo! Spring Break!" anytime they started dancing. Sounds fun, right?

Brooke Hogan shows up as the Matt Hooper equivalent, as she is playing a marine biologist. In much the same way that "Alone In The Dark" included Tara Reid as an archeologist, this is a little tough to swallow, to the point that the movie actually makes it the subject of a joke at one point, with one of the characters asking "Doctor of what?" when she is introduced with her professional moniker. On the plus side, unlike Tara Reid, Brooke Hogan has the capacity to actually pronounce the words that are coming out of her mouth. So good job on that one.

Why can't I escape you? And why are you constantly one of the better actors in these movies?!

I'm actually not joking when I say that Brooke Hogan wasn't bad in this. For what this movie is, she did just fine, and is the only character that plays her part fairly straight, which is out of the norm for most of the rest of the cast, who play up the goofiness full blast. Some are worse than others, none more so than our main character, the douchebag throwing the party, played to the zany hilt by Corin Nemec. And while I did appreciate the fact that they're not trying to kid us into attempting the thought of taking "Sand Sharks" seriously, the line between "quirky" and "obnoxious" was obliterated almost the instant he walked on screen.

Just imagine Dane Cook playing Van Wilder imitating Jim Carrey. And never sleep again.

We also have Asylum veteren Robert Pike Daniel playing the Quint equivalent, and yeah, I guess his performance is genuinely salty enough. Although I must say that it's quite distracting whenever you have a guy talking like a pirate in your movie. Especially when it's not about pirates. I just always find myself thinking how much more interesting the film would have been had it been set in the Caribbean in the 1700's. I dunno. At least it'd be unique.

I guess I just don't understand why he's doing a pirate voice instead of Quint's gruff Bostonian accent. I mean, as long as we're ripping stuff off right? Hearing a dude saying stuff like "Yar, I be valuin' me neck fer more'n two thousan' bucks! I catch 'em fer ten, matey!" just does not have the same ring to it. I'm just saying.

I also don't remember Quint having a flamethrower. I'm also pretty sure those don't work that way.

Not so scurvy nor entertaining was Eric Scott Woods, playing the Brody equivalent, whose method of acting appears to be to clench his teeth to the point of shattering between every line reading, and then just look kind of sleepy. I guess being the least interesting person on the screen improves your survival odds in these films.

"Na-hurr...acting."

Finally, the issue of the CGI sharks must be addressed, because like all these movies, the sharks are CGI. And maybe it's just a thing, but I don't understand why it's so hard to make a shark look decent using CGI. I've never seen it done well. Not once. And this is no exception. Again, like "Shark Week," the sharks in this film look like Playstation 1 graphics, although they are a slight step up from "Shark Week." Maybe late era PS1.

Not helping is the fact that there is a real bad disconnect going on with the scale of these things, since once minute they're 30 feet long, and the next minute they're half that size. The worst example was at the end when the momma shark appears, at first literally appearing to be bigger than a blue whale, but then fully emerges from the ground in a building not 10 feet wide, comfortably fitting inside, fins spread and all. It tends to undermine the hugeness of the object.

I guess it was a slight step up from "Shark Week," if only because it didn't take itself too seriously, but it makes me wonder why it's apparently so freaking hard to make a good shark movie. Was "Jaws" just an inconceivable fluke? What happened?

This trilogy seems ill-fated...

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Sand Sharks" is a silly, low-budget creature feature which contains sequences of point-for-point rip offs of "Jaws." Honestly, if you wanted a shark movie that didn't take itself seriously, just watch "Deep Blue Sea." At least that one was somewhat unique. Skip this one.

2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

Oh I'm for real. This is not a test, yes that just happened, and no, I have not taken up Photoshop in order to make my worst fever-dreams a reality. I'm as serious as an aneurism. Do not adjust your television sets or check to see if someone slipped LSD in your coffee. I give you "2-Headed Shark Attack." Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Asylum.

The Asylum is a movie production company that has been around for a while now. They make what they call "mockbusters," which are low-budget (see also: no budget) rip offs of other, more successful and popular films. Think I may be nitpicking when I say they are rip-offs? Some Asylum movies of note are "Snakes On A Train," "The Day The Earth Stopped," and "Transmorphers." The point of that, of course, is so that grandma can buy the wrong movie in the clearance bin for Junior's birthday.

Ever since finding out about them, I have been a fan. I mean, how could you not love movies with names like that? The sheer audacity and testicular fortitude it takes to make movies that blatant is astounding. Now, don't get me wrong. Overall, these movies are god-awful. I mean bad. Most of the time, they aren't even the kind of bad that is enjoyable. They're just so bad they're boring.

Movies like "The Terminators" and "Megaquake" are painful to sit through due to their incredible lack of anything interesting happening, but every once in a while, The Asylum knocks one out of the park. "Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus" in particular is fantastic in its ridiculous nature, and "100 Million B.C." as well as "The Land That Time Forgot," are their best action films. And "100 Million B.C." has Michael Gross! That's awesome!

Come on! Burt from the "Tremors" series! Nothing? Ah, screw all you philistines.

The Asylum also deserves credit for even one-upping their source material on one occasion. Their version of "Paranormal Activity," called "Paranormal Entity," was FAR superior to the movie it is ripping off, not a difficult task mind you, but "Paranormal Entity" is actually not a bad piece of work by itself, even if it wasn't a rip-off, and is unquestionably their best movie.

But back to "2-Headed Shark Attack." The Asylum is kind of shackled to monster features like this, and they've made A LOT of them, most involving really big sea creatures. Most are pretty pathetic, and while "2-Headed Shark Attack" pretty much falls in the middle of the pack in terms of quality (it is generally just "meh" at best), it's their most efficient entry in terms of doing what it set out to do. And what does it do?

^This.

 

Babes. Babes in bikinis. Lots of them. Babes in bikinis is how this movie rolls, and it does it LIKE A BOSS.

I mean, that's all you really need to know, because that's the only reason this movie exists. The rather unnecessarily large cast is roughly 70% female, not a single one of them is harsh on the eyes, and all but two of them spend the entire film in bikinis or occasionally less. And every 10 minutes or so, some of them get eaten by a shark with two heads.

You know what? One, please.

I'm serious. After "Drive," "The Ides of March," and "J. Edgar," I'm ready for some entertainment, damn it. So you know what? I'm kicking back and enjoying the smut. Break out the popcorn and beer. Let's light this candle.

If I had to describe the story, I would say it's um…present. It exists, but it doesn't really like to make itself known. It's a very shy creature. Basically, there are a bunch of college students on a "semester at sea" boat, which is about a third of the size needed to house that amount of people at sea for a semester, but was obviously the biggest boat they could borrow from one of the director's rich friends. Along the way Carmen Electra, boobs, bad acting, and a 2-headed shark happens and an island explodes on itself. And that's about it really.

The attacks, which one would assume would be the highlights, tend to be some of the weakest moments of the film. There's effectively no tension at all, because the movie never stops to NOT do the same thing it's done before. The moment someone gets the water, they immediately go to the bad CG-shark swimming towards them, and after an ETERNITY it finally gets to the person and eats them in a series of bad edits. And since the shark has two heads, almost every attack involves two people falling in the water at the same time to be eaten by one head each, because we didn't get the fact that it's a 2-headed shark based on something like the title.

Hilariously, there's a CG shot of the shark chomping at the water (and nothing else) that is recycled several times throughout the film when the shark is eating someone, even when it was clearly shown in the shots before and after it that there was somebody in its mouth who disappears for that one shot. Then they're back in the next one. It's pretty funny and makes for a hell of a drinking game that can be played with any Asylum movie: "Spot the recycled shot." You'll be bombed before 30 minutes, which isn't a bad way to watch these movies.

Seems legit.

I mentioned the acting before and yeah, it's pretty rough. It's obvious that these kids were not chosen for their acting prowess. Let me put it this way: Brooke Hogan (yes, the Hulkster's daughter) is one of the better actresses in the film. Think about that. Carmen Electra actually isn't given that much to do, which I would normally say would be to the film's advantage, but it's not like she'd bring the movie down. Hell, I'm pretty sure she has the most acting experience of anyone in this thing.

It's just a weird thing when Debbie Gibson and Tiffany in "Mega-Piranha" were more convincing.

Debbie: "It's OK, Tiffany. I think we're alone now." Tiffany: ::SLAP::

There was one exception, however. Mercedes Young, who plays the token black girl is given the best lines in the movie, and gives amazing readings of them. Her finger snapping, head shifting back-and-forth delivery of such gems as "Oh, he gon' die!" and "You's a bitch" are hysterical, and are hands down the most entertaining part of the film besides the bikinis.

For anyone who watches this movie and complains, take a look at the DVD cover again. What the hell else do you want? If you picked up this movie, there's no way you didn't know what you're getting yourself into. And you have to admit, at no point does "2-Headed Shark Attack" lie to you. Trust me, movies lie to you all the time with this stuff. Low budget as The Asylum is, it's nice to have some honesty for once.

THE BOTTOM LINE: While not the best movie The Asylum has made, "2-Headed Shark Attack" is far from the worst. If you've seen and even halfway enjoyed any of their other films, check this one out. That being said, it's still low-budget schlock that's just a tad south of a Sci-Fi Channel movie, so unless you dig that stuff, I shouldn't even have to tell you to skip it. Me? I enjoyed it.