The comedy lives on from the forum dwellers on down, at the website called “Freakin’ Awesome Network.” The site, it is told, houses a DVD review article so bold, called DIRECT TO DVD DISSECTION. With a load of text and a handful of wit, a movie is justly broken down. On this week’s entry, it’s a seafaring tale, that blows harder than the “Gales of November”…
The Story
While dredging for gold beneath the Bering Sea, siblings Donna and Joe are confronted by a horde of horrific sea vampires. When their father falls victim to the insatiable creatures, Donna and Joe join forces with a dedicated marine biologist and a loyal deckhand to kill or be killed by the beasts.
The Cast
Brandon Beemer as Owen. The new recruit of a salvage ship who finds himself in the middle of a dangerous situation on his first day.
Cassie Scerbo as Donna. The daughter of the ship captain and supporting leader with her brother, Joe. Very moody and definition of an ice queen.
Jonathan Lipnicki as Joe, son of the ship captain, and brother to Donna. The comedic one, who seems to crack jokes about things, to a point.
Jaqueline Fleming as Megan. A biologist with some past experiences with the monsters who tries to team up with the family in order to stop the menace once and for all.
The Dissection
The siblings Donna (Scerbo) and Joe (Lipnicki), after a dumb decision on their part obviously backfires
When it comes to monsters and the sea, it’s a wonder why anyone even bothers to go into the water anymore. Whether it’s big sharks, squids, crazed beasts from the deep, and a bunch of other nonsense that makes up the Asylums film library, there’s always gotta be something in the water in these kind fo movies. This one is no different. And that’s a problem with it, cause it’s not any different from any other standard horror film. You have a bunch of people getting attacked by a monster from the deep, and the issue with that and toss in a bit of a dickhead for a rival and a big showdown with the monsters. All in all, it’s really stock and in most situations, would be something to pass on .
Except……..you have to see the monsters. Dear GOD, you have to see the monster.
Now, the monsters are called “Sea Vampires” in the film. Now, the name is very very dumb, and it is a constant albatross for the main characters in getting help and ending this film early. However, these fish monsters act EXACTLY like vampires, down to dying from high intensity light and even using their wings/fins as a cape, especially using it to cover themselves against a light. Plus, movies of this caliber do not have computer animation and special effects to the level of major studios, it’s understandable and most try to kind of limit or work around that. Not this one! No, this movie, from start to finish, puts their bad animation on the front, and it comes off like a mix of the special effects of BIRDEMIC and the splicing of scenes from THE GIANT CLAW. You have creatures that just look downright laughable, and it’s inter-spliced with people acting very scared over something that obviously have not seen when they filmed them.
The terrifying, monsterou…..BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
The hilarity of the monsters in the movie take away from the regular issues of the movie, like the inconsistent tone that occurs several times in the film. There’s a scene with the main characters just finding out about someone’s death in the film, and they’re very emotional from it and screaming and crying and taking it very hard. Next scene, and one of the characters is making jokes at a character over the phone over the incident from the last scene, and the scene after that just hits the reset on that. They also act so out of the ordinary that they don’t even seem like normal people in this station. Plus, for all the things it tries to push on the audience, there really isn’t any reason given to the audience to care about a single character. We don’t know enough about any of them to even care if they live or die.
The movie is a Syfy original movie, and that’s probably the best place for it. It’s helped by the fact the DVD itself has nothing other than trailers for other film on it.
The Verdict
To give the movie some late game praise, for all the praise SHARKNADO gets for it’s film, this movie does SHARKNADO better, because it’s not trying as hard as that movie in trying to be a bad Z-grade flick. This movie is worth watching, on TV unless you and some friends want to throw away a buck and change to riff on a film. This works for that, and not much else.