Sharknado

Plot synopsis:
The movie opens with a sea captain and his crew illegally capturing sharks off the coast of Mexico and slicing off their fins, tossing the dead sharks back into the sea. An Asian man, known only as Mr. Palmer, is seen below deck with the captain, Santiago, and the man offers $100,000 for the captain's cache of shark fins. Captain Santiago scoffs at the offer and asks for $1,000,000. When Palmer questions why (the shark fin soup offered to him by the captain was 'good, not great') Santiago states that a record-breaking pod of 20,000 sharks is passing through the waters, implying the catch will be well worth the price. When Palmer offers $500,000, the captain pulls out a loaded gun and lays it on the table, and Palmer reluctantly agrees to the $1,000,000, and offers $100,000 hidden in a tackle box as down payment. The captain seals the deal by telling the man that he knows the secret to shark fishing -- that man should not be afraid of the sharks, but the sharks should fear man. A storm kicks up on deck, and the captain goes to investigate. Returning below deck, he finds Palmer, the gun and the tackle box missing. Santiago and Palmer confront each other on deck while sharks begin to jump aboard the ship and chomp various crew members. Palmer and Santiago are both eaten as the sharks are shown swimming in greater and greater numbers around the ship whilst the storm swirls around the now-empty boat.At the Santa Monica Pier, beach goers are preparing to surf, and we meet Finley "Fin" Shepard (Ian Ziering) and his best friend Baz (Jaason Simmons). Fin is a former champion surfer who now owns a bar built on the outer edge of the pier, surrounded by ocean. Fin is excited about the announcement that a storm brewing in Mexico will soon reach their shores, bring great surf. Inside the bar, George (John Heard) is a patron with a permanent seat, always perched on his red stool. He regularly flirts with the waitress Nova (Cassie Scerbo). Nova has a mysterious scar on her leg that she will not discuss.A little later, while Fin is walking down the beach and enjoying looking at the surf, he witnesses a fellow surfer get chomped by a shark. Baz, who is nearby on a jet ski, tries to get to Fin, but Fin is too busy trying to get the attention of the other people in the water, yelling that there is a shark. Soon it is obvious there are many sharks, and chaos ensues as the people in the bar hear the commotion and run out, the folks on the sand panic, and the people in the water experience various forms of shark-bite injuries.Baz is attacked on the jet ski by a shark that leaps out of the water and bites his leg. Fin paddles over and bravely rams it with his surfboard, and the shark lets go. Fin and Baz head inland on the jet ski.On shore, medics are ready to assist Baz with the minor "flesh wound" to his leg, while others are writhing on the beach missing limbs. Nova shows up, and chastises Fin for not being more careful - she clearly has a crush on Fin, who reminds Nova that he is too old for her. Meanwhile, Baz is providing comic relief while he gets a bandage on the 6-inch long gash on his leg.With everyone safely back inside the bar a short time later, the storm gets worse, and Fin is nervous. He insists on calling April (Tara Reid) his ex-wife to make sure she and his teenage daughter Chloe (Aubry Peebles) are safe. Nova is surprised to learn her boss has an ex-wife and daughter. With April clearly hostile on the phone, Fin insists on coming to get them since the storm will cause flooding and the house is less than 10 miles from the beach. April advises Fin that he need not be responsible for them anymore because her boyfriend Colin (Christopher Wolfe) says everything is fine.As the storm rages outside, and the waves pummel the windows of the bar, Fin decides to go see April and Chloe anyway, and announces the bar is closed. As he says this, a shark bursts through the front window of the bar, carried in on a massive wave. As the great white wriggles along the ground looking for humans to chomp, Nova grabs a pool cue and stakes the shark right through the head. Nova really, really hates sharks.As the people run from the bar and try to escape the storm, sharks begin flying through the air, propelled by the water and winds, and chomp quite a few people. The group of Fin, Nova, Baz and George agree that they need weapons, and each one gets an item from the bar. Nova takes a pump-action rifle from behind the bar, and George takes his barstool. The storm loosens the Ferris wheel on the pier, and the wheel begins to roll, chasing down and crushing a few people lucky enough to escape the sharks.As the winds calm down, Fin sees his bar destroyed, and the area is flooded with ocean water as the sea rises. In the flood waters are hundreds of sharks, obviously from the large "pod" mentioned earlier. The group of friends decides to help Fin on his quest to get to April and Chloe, and pile into Fin's truck.Getting to the house is an adventure, as the group encounters much flooding (Fin's truck has a sealed engine so he can get the through the water) and many stranded motorists. As the storm gets worse, so does the flooding, and soon sharks are swimming right alongside the truck. At various points, the group stops to assist people, and Nova is very handy with the rifle as she shoots more than her fair share of sharks. George is the first casualty, when he uses his barstool-weapon to break a window for a dog locked in a woman's car. A shark swallows him in front of the stunned friends.When Fin, Baz and Nova arrive at the enormous and beautiful ex-home of Fin's, April is still angry. She insults Nova and Baz, and won't listen to Fin when he warns her that the flooding and storm is coming. Suddenly, a shark bursts forth out of a manhole (from the sewer system) and Nova blasts it with the shotgun like a skeet shooter. April lets the group in the house. Inside, April is still in denial and Chloe is a brat. Boyfriend Colin then makes an appearance and tells Fin that until his monthly visitation week arrives, Chloe is none of his business. Fin tries to tell April about the sharks, and Colin steps up to the living room window to show Fin there are no sharks when . . . BAM! One comes flying through the window at him. Baz, Fin and Nova try to rescue him, but he's torn to bits. Now April is convinced, and agrees to go with them further inland. Chloe mentions that they have to get Matt (Chuck Hittinger) who is in flight school in Van Nuys. Nova is shocked to learn Matt is Fin's son, and Fin is angry that no one told him Matt was in flight school.On the way to Van Nuys, many sharks are fought, and many lines are said that give homage to "Jaws." Fin continues to show his good-guy nature by rescuing an entire school bus of teens, and Robbie the Bus Driver (Robbie Rist) dies a uniquely funny death.Along the way, the truck is destroyed during a shark encounter and Baz steals a tricked-out Humvee. Once in Van Nuys, the storm has reached hurricane proportions and three enormous waterspouts have formed over the ocean and come inland, each one swirling hundreds of hungry sharks in its funnel. Matt is found, his flight instructor is sucked out of the hangar into one of the funnels, and a few sharks fall out of the sky at various intervals and must be killed.Realizing the local nursing home residents are in trouble, and the town must be saved, Matt concocts a plan to throw homemade bombs into the twisters, hoping the explosion will equalize the pressure and neutralize the twisters and bring the sharks back down to earth. Because Matt is the only student at flight school with helicopter flying experience, he volunteers to go up and fly close enough to the twisters to toss the bombs in, and Nova volunteers to go with him. This seems to bond them, and they develop a mini-crush on each other, and Nova reveals the reason for the scar on her leg (a childhood shark attack that killed her family --marvelously clever Jaws reference inserted here).The conveniently-next-door hardware supply store provides the group with fresh ammo, bomb materials and Fin takes a liking to a chainsaw. Meanwhile, Baz starts working on plan B, rigging bombs up to the Humvee, saying he will sacrifice himself to drive the vehicle into the twisters if it comes to that. Fin stays on the ground with April and Chloe to kill the sharks that will rain down once the twisters die.In the sky, Matt and Nova neutralize two of the twisters rather easily, and the ground team kills a lot of sharks very creatively. Baz gets attacked and eaten. With one twister remaining, Chloe throws the bomb but it doesn't work. A shark chomps onto the choppers' "skis" and won't let go, tipping the chopper sideways in the air. Nova falls out and is swallowed whole by a great white soaring by while a terrified Matt watches.Fin realizes the third twister must be stopped and drives the Humvee close to the twister, sets the bomb, and jumps out at the last minute. The explosion stops the last twister. Matt manages to expertly land the chopper that is now on fire.As sharks rain around them, Fin returns to the group and sees a shark soaring through the air, straight at Chloe's back. Fin pushes his daughter to safety and, holding the running chainsaw out in front of him, manages to allow the great white to swallow him in one gulp. As his loved ones look on, the shark flops around on the ground, its stomach wriggling. Suddenly, Fin cuts through the shark from the inside, and emerges from the gooey insides of the man eater. Reaching in, he pulls out Nova, who is unconscious. A shark-goo covered Nova gets CPR from a smitten Matt and survives, while April reluctantly kisses the super-gooey Fin, our movie's hero.

Tags: absurd, cult, violence

Review:
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.
And yet Sharknado rises above mathematics to give us a film that is bad in every single possible way.Continuity is shrugged off completely.
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.
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.
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.
For anyone who hasn't seen the SyFy original movie, Sharknado; it's a heart-warming, coming of age story about a ragtag group of sharks uprooted from their home by mother nature's fury.
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.
All in all, if you truly are interested in bad movies, I recommend you watch something like Troll 2 or Miami Connection.
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.
I'm thankful for the laughter, though, because it kept at bay any sort of aesthetic sense that might have interfered with my viewing pleasure.Regardless of genre, most movies are a construction of thoughtfully planned scenes, each of which presenting plot points and character motivations that, together, form a plausible narrative, allowing for the proverbial "suspension of disbelief." Such careful craftsmanship is never more important than at a film's beginning.
Other than the brief preview of the "sharknado" to come at the end of the second act (yes, I'm taking some liberties by using standard film vernacular to describe this storyline), it was as if this scene was jumbled together from leftover footage of some other SyFy shark movie.
I think Ferrante's purpose was to preemptively counter all would-be critics who might say things like "This is no Jaws." He could have just titled the movie Another Killer Shark Film That Is Not Jaws.
Nova's scar story, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, serves to again make the director's statement: "I am aware of Jaws, as is everyone in the civilized world, and this is not that movie!"Later, this same point is made again, this time even more comically and pointedly.
She sees an enormous shark coming straight at them and declares: "We're gonna need a bigger chopper."If you want to be moderately entertained, then I don't think you will be disappointed with Sharknado.
The acting done by Tara Reid is amazing I feel like I was actually living her shark filled life story.
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.
I have never seen a movie so chopped up and put together.One minute there are tidal waves of water & tornadoes, dry streets and sunny skies the next.The surfing scene is a great example of what I'm talking about.
But one thing that is right about the movie, is that most shark attacks happen in 3 feet of water.
They're full of hungry sharks!This is truly bad, even by the execrable standards of SyFy movies.
The concept for this movie is unspeakably stupid and just does not work at any stage.Although Sharknado is of course low budget tosh, there are no excuses for film making of such execrable standards.
Many viewers who have assisted this garbage in attaining some sort of pathetic cult status insist the amateur CGI, bad acting and ridiculous premise is what makes this film so fun to watch.
Seriously you have no reason to read anymore, you know this movie contains Sharks and Tornados.
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.
Plus, if you've seen the trailer, you've seen a lot of the "Money Shots." But, the cast and crew are game, and the effects are fun, helped by the fact that they are getting more affordable to do these days.Plus, SyFy Channel needs content, and The Asylum is more than happy to oblige!
But if you put these trifles to one side it's a fast paced, action packed, hilarious romp that few films can match.The added bonus of ex 90210 actors acting their wooden hearts out just adds to the fun.The delightful nom nom nom noise made my the huge rubber sharks whenever they try to bite anything is another highlight.One of the best and worst films I've seen in years!10 out of 10.
Sharknado is not entertaining in the least.I'll skip the credits, skip the plot and get right down to business, this movie is a crappy made-for-TV snooze-fest, starring D-list celebrities and made by inept "filmmakers" who seem to have trouble differentiating between endearingly cheesy and downright bad.
However, the problem with Sharknado is not that it is silly, it's that it is boring.The cast has no charm, the effects are in a dead zone between not bad enough to be funny, and not good enough to be convincing, the look of the film is murky and dull, and the action scenes are incomprehensible and poorly edited.
Sharknado is not entertaining, a flaw that will sink any movie, whether it has shark-filled tornadoes or not.20/100.
But then you probably already knew that.If you can put aside all the - many - negatives about this film and see it for what it is - a piece of silly, stupid, cheesy fun, then you should be entertained for an hour and a half.Of course you could just invite ten of your best friends round, get hideously drunk and put this on - it'll probably end up in your list of Top Ten films of all time if you watch it inebriated..
The acting is below the bottom of the barrel, the script is appalling, the sharks look like enemies in a playstation one game, the direction is ridiculous and the plot is utter gibberish.
In fact, if you actually succeed in making it bad then you've really made a 'good' film, in that you did exactly what you intended to.
It was a cliché from start to finish, I wanted to have fun watching the nonsensical scenes like bombs to stop tornadoes, guns to kill sharks in mid-air (changing their trajectory), cutting a shark clean in two using a chainsaw while it hurtled from the sky.
The acting is as despicable as the script and directing and editing and effects and every other aspect!!And I thought "Shark In Venice" was the worst movie ever...
There are movies are so bad that they don't even make rank for "so bad it's good." Then there's Sharknado, which plumbs new depths in cinema, and deserves its own category of awful.The winning formula in Sharknado is that it lures you into believing that no way, this movie just *can't* get any stupider or more nonsensical...and then, just as you've become comfortable, the film ups the ante, as if to say, "You thought that was terrible film-making?
Sharknado is a film about Sharks that hitch a ride on a tornado and terrorize Las Angeles.
It would be advised to turn your brain off when SHARKNADO starts up because if you come into a movie like this expecting any sort of logic then you're going to be out of luck.
SHARKNADO is the type of bad "C" film that I enjoy watching because it puts everything bad about it on the back burner and at least delivers some cheap entertainment, which is something hard to come by..
The concept of the film where the wind and rain of a tornado drop the sharks deep into the heart of the city, gives this plenty to like as there's a unique setup at play here taking sharks away from the water where they're known to live and placing them on dry land letting the ferocity and intensity of their attacks take place in a new locale.
There's constant action and cheesy gore effects as various people (read: extras) are torn to pieces by the maritime monsters, and it's all as ridiculous and over-the-top as you'd hope for.Nobody goes into this expecting good acting, and you won't be surprised by the woeful performances of, for example, Tara Reid (Cassie Scerbo is much better).
John Heard is bloated and unrecognisable from his HOME ALONE days.SHARKNADO is a film filled with cheesy CGI effects and plenty of continuity errors and plot holes; the constantly changing water levels are probably the silliest thing about it.
Everyone knows the plot, and you get the impression that the film was constructed in the wake of a night out that involved one of the producers declaring: "Imagine one of those terror storm movies involving sharks!
So, in the midst of weather systems that come and go, sharks that change size and leap from here, there, and everywhere, and an interminable bus rescue, the cast is game, although Tara Reid looks a bit bewildered by what is going on at times, while John Heard pretty much forms a double act with a bar stool.
sharknado is the very best asylum / syfy TV movie i've ever seen and actually one of the only ones to rise above a 4.
like air collision, sharknado is a commendable example of how to take one event and stretch it out to feature length, which is no easy task when the event is 'sharks in a tornado' or 'two planes are about to crash in midair.' amazingly, sharknado does not pad it's first act with drama minutiae, but quickly deliver some action and so the escalation of events really continues throughout the whole movie.
Far from great, and it is easy for anybody- regardless of whether they are taking it too seriously or not- to criticise it, but Sharknado is also one of SyFy's/The Asylum's more tolerable and most fun to watch movies.
The next worst thing were the special effects(nearly always one of the worst assets of their movies, so that was expected), they are some of the better effects to appear in SyFy's/The Asylum's output but the fact that they look so artificial and though they were made in a rush doesn't make that say very much.
Their scenes admittedly are hilariously chaotic and incredibly dumb but interweave within the nature of the story very well, there are even scenes that are bust-a-gut-laughing-worthy, like character chainsawing their way out of a shark.
The best of the lot is Ian Ziering, he's very funny and has good charisma, the character starts out a little obnoxious but you actually grow to like him.All in all, not a great movie with some obvious flaws and maybe overpraised by some reviewers, but it is a lot of fun to watch and for a SyFy/Asylum movie it is one of their better ones.
While Sharknado is not on the level of Snakes on a Plane, it still is a good time for people who enjoy absurd disaster movies..
From the improbability of sharks swimming down suburban streets six miles inland to the outright absurdity of a helicopter hovering mere feet away from a violent tornado (sorry: sharknado!), there is very little in this film that makes logical sense.
My Rating : 1/10A Bad movie of the best kind.Forget everything, make this a priority and watch it right now..
You might be wondering who would even watch Sharknado, but a better question is who would actually write a review of this movie.
You don't root for anyone, and it isn't that much fun you could watch it alone like the best of B- movies.
I honestly didn't have much hope for this movie and have been holding off watching it for quite a while and I'm sort of glad i did.I really enjoyed watching this movie, maybe not as much as other more realistic movies, but thought it was really funny.From the start i enjoyed picking out all the wrong things in the movie and all the unbelievable and the funny and it was a big joke among friends.Other than the obvious flaws that they have put in the movie purposely where some are funny and some a stupid, the story line wasn't that great.I understand its a 'stupid comedy'like zombeavers however i found the story line of this movie to be all over that place and unpredictable which i don't like in these sorts of films.I'm giving it 4 stars because it was a funny movie but very very different to others in the genre and i don't think it worked very well in this case.
On one hand it is quite possibly the worst film I've ever seen - and most definitely it ends up on the top five of really freaking bad movies.
When I saw the preview for this, I thought "wow, how can this be a true story!?!?" So before watching the movie, I read up on the latest literature--publications such as "Helicopters and the Fall of the Roman Empire", "How to Use a Fishing Pole for the First Time", "Sharks: How to Speak Sign Language With Them", "The Phantom Tollbooth", and of course "Surviving the Apocalypse: Everything You Need to Know About Feral Cats".So going into this movie, I felt like I sort of cheated because I knew all of the background and really expected that nothing in the movie would be much of a surprise.
Watching a freak hurricane bring thousands of sharks raining down to terrorize a group of friends in a waterlogged Los Angeles.Sharknado makes no excuses; its shameless, brainless, bloody good time.
For some reason this was the only thing that bothered me, not the bad acting, dubious CGI or the fact that man eating sharks are raining down from the sky!
The film goes on to deliver loads of blood and action, but with its cheap production value, stupid story, and terrible acting, the film delivers lots of laughs as well.The story for Sharknado pretty much mirrors the same formulaic disaster-movie fare you may have seen in such cinematic gems as Birdemic.
Some viewers might prefer to laugh at truly bad films, which are unintentionally funny; I personally appreciate the lack of pretension in Sharknado, for it knows its place in the world and lives up to its name.There may truly be no dumber film than this.It's all about a shark tornado.Sharknado.Enough said!
You turn your brain off for 90 minutes and just enjoy the fun, but bumpy ride.I know it sounds like I'm giving "Sharknado" a bad review, but I'm actually not.
Filmmakers like the Asylum are under the impression that the less you think about how to tell a story, the worse the movie.
Instead of crafting the best most epic bad movie Sharknado could be, the film feels padded by a lazy story.
Makes JAWS III look like The Old Man and the Sea. All the viewers were harmed in the making of this movie.Imagine if you will a tornado (which occurs over land, right?) picking up just sharks and then dropping them serially over the same area for an hour.
There is simply no way of redeeming this dreck on ANY level; it's not a farce, it's not fun as a disastrously bad attempt at "movie" making; I feel absolutely sick for having spent ANY amount of time watching a single frame of this garbage.
I could explain the storyline with great detail, but I think you already know from the name what this movie is all about; a tornado hits LA, full of ridiculously hungry killer sharks.
So enjoy with a mind as open as it was when you willingly invested time in a movie about sharks in tornadoes..
Now Sharknado as a movie may not have been ripping off any specific film when it came out, but it certainly ticks a lot of the classic Asylum checklist - middling to horrible acting, ugly bland locations and a confused lacklustre story, shoddy effects work that looks like it's been done by a first year graphic design student?
Get used to that if you watch other shark films from Asylum, it is their go to cause for everything!