Sharknado

Sharknado (Anthony C. Ferrante, 2013)

The fine folks over at Video Services Corp and The Asylum have granted me of a screener of the film. It is a very good quality DVD and the transfer is amazing. The Canadian release date is September 10 2013.

Presented as the new B-movie of the moment, Sharknado stars more or less has-beens like John Heard, Tara Reid, and Ian Ziering. Produced by Asylum entertainment, the first minutes of it picturing dozens of sharks swimming into one direction with very very low budget special effects doesn’t really gives seriousness to the best movie title ever. Even the catch phrase of the poster : Enough said, is enough to make anybody laugh. Once we get passed the cheap 3D animations of sharks flying around, we are in for a treat that links the early careers of Ziering (90201) and Reid.

 

Then a silly storyline that wants so much to be as unbelievably believable as Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and as entertaining and legendary as George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead brilliantly achieves to at least make us laugh and have a fast 90 minutes of sheer fun. Yes it is a quite enjoyable feature when you enter in it thinking; whoa, this is gonna suck so bad! Well, it is bad in the way that it is impossible that tornadoes can carry living skarks and attack the city of Los Angeles. Well, I don’t know why I have to actually write that down but I think I had to write it to be sure it won’t ever happen.

At least, it is clear that the filmmakers aren’t taking themselves too seriously and that they have some kind of self mockery. One thing made me really laugh was the Hollywood sign flying all over the place and I though : Wow this is so bold to actually tear down the whole thing and make such a statement with a piece of catastrophe movie, a genre that sold the soul of Hollywood by the way, and have it destroy the thiny lasting spirit of nowadays movies made in Hollywood. Goddammit, there’s even a shark that let his mark into the cement of the Grauman’s Theater for crying out loud! It’s almost profanity indulged to the old Hollywood.

In a way, I admire this kind of film making where with few means they manage to make a statement and be openly over the top and involving so much with so little substance. Because, yes the characters are one sided and make strange decisions without really having a clear motivation, but who needs that when there are sharks flying around and Ziering there with his family to save Hollywood! Enough said!