Shark Week (2012)

It's time for another trilogy of films! For the next 3 days, I shall watch and talk about 3 similar themed movies. This week, it's SHARK ATTACK WEEK! This is a target rich environment, as shark movies are nearly literally a dime-a-dozen. And what luck! There just happened to be 3 straight to DVD shark movies released lately! Let's do this.

We start off the trilogy by once again taking a trip down to The Asylum, with their low-budget creature feature, "Shark Week." I have to say, it takes a certain amount of both courage and suicidal tendencies to throw in Asylum movies on a fairly regular basis. In a way it's much like Russian Roulette. When the movie is unexpectedly good or amusing in it's cheesiness, it's not unlike hearing that sweet "click" of the hammer falling on empty air in the chamber, and there's that wonderful moment of relief. But when the movie is bad, and man, when The Asylum is bad it's really bad, instead of a "click," all of sudden you're Christopher Walken and your brains are decorating both the wall and Robert DeNiro's face.

But wait? Would that mean I'd be Christopher Walken? Because that would be sweet. Are bad Asylum movies therefore a good thing? I think I'm getting off topic a bit. This movie ate.

"Shark Week" is directed by Christopher Olen Ray, the same man who brought us "2-Headed Shark Attack," a film that while bad at least got women in bikinis right. In fact, I did find "2-Headed Shark Attack" actually decently entertaining especially in retrospect, which is something that I can't say for "Shark Week." And while they were honestly about at the same level of sophistication, at least "2-Headed Shark Attack" had a high body count, funny characters, an attempt at practical effects, a script that made a modicum more sense, and a bunch of ladies who were really, really hot.

"Shark Week" is simply boring. That's the biggest problem with Asylum movies, which is that when they get bad, it's not just that what you're seeing is dumb, it's that it's dull to the point of being an excellent sleep aide. The characters are also next to faceless, with literally no characterization given at all besides the reason why they are here. There are no practical effects whatsoever, and all the sharks are really poorly done CGI that would have been laughed off of a PS1 game. The script is absurdly bad, with the acting being the only thing worse. And there's not a bikini to be found.

All I'm saying is at this point, a sassy little two-piece couldn't hurt your film.

What "Shark Week" is trying to pull off is essentially a combination of "Saw" and "Deep Blue Sea" with a little bit of mafia vendetta thrown in as an excuse to make it all happen. Patrick Bergen plays our villain, a man named Tiberon, who is a drug runner who's son was killed. You can tell he's trying to go for a Don Johnson / Jeff Fahey thing, but he comes off more like that uncle that gets drunk on the holidays and starts in with their political dogma about how "Gov'ment ain't right," much to the discomfort of everyone else in the room.

"Obama's a Muslim Nazi! FEMA camps! THE GAYS!!!"

Joining him is Yancy Butler, who is totally slumming it being in this, as his psycho girlfriend type who I think is supposed to be modeled after Katya from "Die Hard With A Vengeance," but Yancy just looks bored and embarrassed to be there. It's actually pretty sad, although I'd be ashamed too if I was forced to spit out such dreck as "Sharks are gods."

"Offer yourself to the great ruler of time and space, Jabberjaw."

What Tiberon is up to is revenging himself upon the people who he feels are responsible for his son's death. He rounds up the undercover cop who ended up shooting him, the druggie who snitched, the chick who led the investigation, the prosecutor for the investigation, the medic who couldn't save him, and so on and so forth. It's portrayed as this big, intricate mystery as to "why are they all here," and every once in a while there's a scene with a big revelation and shocked faces all around, when I'm guessing the mention of the dead criminal's name would have made it so that all 8 of the victims would have immediately put two and two together, considering they were all right in the middle of the situation.

It's like in "Final Fantasy VIII" when all the characters conveniently forgot they all grew up in the same orphanage. You may say that it never came up, but it's a lot easier to buy the "You are all stupid" explanation as opposed to the "Nobody asked" one. Either way it's dumb.

The whole movie consists of these simpletons walking from place to place going up against bigger and bigger sharks, completely going along with whatever Tiberon wants them to do, because as they convince themselves "They have no choice." Well, perhaps they don't, but there were a few occasions when they straight up unnecessarily put themselves into a dangerous situation for no good reason. Like when they were walking along a beach, saw a shark, and got into the water in an effort to kill it. This gets two of them killed. I just had to guess that they forgot that sharks don't usually remove themselves from the water, and they could have easily just kept walking.

While watching movies like this, I usually try to find maybe one character that I can latch onto, or at least route for to make it a bit more entertaining. For "Shark Week" it was the character of Layla, played by Valerie Garcia. She's the only character given even the slightest bit of personality, as she is playing a tattooed, slightly punk druggie with a sweet haircut that is introduced to us while she is sitting in a bathtub full of water while wearing a dress.

See, at least her introduction is memorable. I don't remember anything about anybody else, but I remember that she was the chick in the bathtub. I was honestly hoping she'd be the one to survive, but unfortunately she ends up getting taken out at the end of the second act. And although she goes out more hardcore than anyone else, after that point I honestly didn't care anymore, because my favorite was gone. But damn it, she took out a shark with a landmine, and that's awesome.

Cupcake, you've got more balls than any of the rest of them. Good on ya.

Look, I hate to bash movies like this. I really do. I love the fact that the people involved obviously love what they do. I want them to keep going. But for the love of criminy, can they please stop overreaching their means by thinking that this horrendous CGI they do is passable? Maybe they can cut back on the monster flicks until their budget warrants it? And if the budget never warrants it, just don't do monster movies. It wouldn't be hard to not do it.

All I'm saying is that when all your budget can afford is cardboard, spraypaint and a Lego set, maybe it's not the right time to try and make "Avatar," you know what I mean?

THE BOTTOM LINE - Even for Asylum fans, "Shark Week" is pretty bad. I was honestly expecting a bit more from the guy who gave us the passable "2-Headed Shark Attack," and no, that's not a joke. An hour and a half would be better served watching that one. At least that one was kind of funny. This is on the low end of The Asylum's scale. Skip It.

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.