Film 34: Sharktopus (2010)

Directed by: Declan O'Brien
Written by: Mike Maclean
Starring: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bursin, Sara Malakul Lane

Alright, full disclosure, I love these types of movies, no matter how bad they are. I've seen Piranhaconda and Dinocroc vs. Supergator, and a whole lot of other cheap and terrible Roger Corman flicks. I know going into any of these movies that they're terrible, but there's just something so mind-numbingly entertaining about watching a thoughtless movie about a monster terrorising a bunch of idiotic government and military types while the filmmakers find as many excuses as possible to include scantily clad women that can be eaten alive at any moment for the sake of cheap entertainment. They're so obviously bad that's it's simply easy to pick at them and rip them to pieces.

The plot is simple (i.e. stupid): scientists have created a Sharktopus, a half-shark half-octopus designed to be used as a super weapon. The Sharktopus breaks free from the scientists' control, and begins attacking people up and down the coastline, so the scientists have to go and get it back. Alive, of course, because it's too valuable an asset to be killed.

The movie's an uninspired take on the tired shark and monster genres. There's not much to talk about here. The acting's wooden, with Lane being a particularly bad stand-out with hardly a believable line uttered and multiple instances of her struggling with her fake accent. The script is full of awkwardness, and it isn't helped by the poor directing, which has no real rhythm or sense to it; dialogue is cut in such a way that it doesn't actually seem like characters are talking to one another, they're repeating words they were just told to say. The effects are embarrassingly hard to look at, never believable and so low effort it's a wonder that they even bothered to try.

There's some moments that draw a good laugh. A woman afraid of heights going bungee jumping for the first time getting picked off by the shark is completely obvious but still got a chuckle out of me. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of scenes that just seem to drag; we cut away from what little story there is to some scene involving a radio show host and his bikini-clad co-worker talking about the reports of sharktopus attacks. It doesn't add anything to the movie and has no real purpose other than to throw shade at the sort of audience that would watch this kind of movie. We get it, the movie's bad and you're not even trying, that doesn't make the film any more entertaining. I love to laugh at these kinds of movies, but so much of this is just boring and hard to look at.

The Verdict: Sharktopus is a really bad movie; it's clearly trying to be, but the moments of humour don't redeem the many more moments of sheer boredom. It isn't really worth anyone's time unless they're looking for quick 'so bad it's good' entertainment.

Rating: 2/10

Published July 19th, 2016