Sharknado Week 2017 got off to a weak start with the Syfy channel’s July 30 premiere of 5-Headed Shark Attack. Directed by the first-time director Nico De Leon and written by too many writers - Jacob Cooney, Bill Hanstock (story); Stephen Meier, Daniel Lawlor, Sean P. Hale (screenplay) - it’s an embarrassment to the earlier 2-Headed Shark Attack and 3-Headed Shark Attack. It stars TV veteran Chris Bruno as shark-hunter Red and Nikki Howard as Dr. Angie Yost, a scientist with a degree in rocking a bikini top. The inaccurate Internet Movie Database summary:
Shaped like a demented starfish, a monster 5-headed shark terrorizes the open ocean before invading the beaches of Puerto Rico, endangering the once peaceful island paradise.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
First off, forget that starfish stuff. It would have been a pretty cool look for the monster, but it’s not in this movie. What we get are four heads up front and a fifth head on the tail. I’ll credit the CGI folks for doing an excellent job with the four heads, but that tail-head never doesn’t look silly.
So much wrong with this movie. 2-Headed Shark Attack has many good moments. 3-Headed Shark Attack was a very good movie. This one is a fail on every level with so many characters making dumb choices over and over and over again. You could predict who was gonna die from where they stood on the various boats or what they did or said before becoming shark food. I won’t dwell on the stupid “black guy dies first” cliche, though, to be fair, the shark actually eats a boatload of nameless models and photographers first.
None of the characters are engaging. None of the acting is anything other than journeyman. The one bit of character growth comes when the head of the aquarium pushing these people to go after the shark so he can exhibit it risks his own life to save two members of the team. Of course, because he didn’t notice his foot was tangled up in the rope attached to the life-saving spear he gets dragged off the boat and into the multiple mouths of the shark.
There’s no explanation given for this creature, other than multiple heads have been known to occur in nature. A reference to Cerberus of Greek mythology describes the three-headed hell hound as a two-headed hell hound. 3-Headed Shark Attack laid the cause of that monster’s mutation on the garbage and pollution in the ocean and then cleverly used that to dispatch the beast.
Even the climax is anti-climatic. The shark gets blown up, but you don’t see anything other than an explosion from under the water and some blood in the water. Bruno’s character survives hooking the big fish with explosives and being taken for a ride, but we don’t see how he survives. Did the filmmakers run out of money?
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
I have an admittedly low standard for recommending cheesy monster movies, mostly because almost any cheesy monster movie can be fun if you watch it in the right frame of mind. There is no right frame of mind that would make 5-Headed Shark Attack worth watching even once. Avoid it.
Sharknado Week picked up considerably with the July 31 premiere of Mississippi River Sharks, the third shark movie from director Misty Talley. Her previous films were Zombie Shark (aka Shark Island) and Ozark Sharks (aka Summer Shark Attack). In just these three movies, I’ve become a big fan of Talley. Writer Marcy Holland also wrote Ozark Sharks. Here’s the IMDb summary:
Sharks attack a fish rodeo on the Mississippi River, and it is up to a group of locals to stop them.
Before we go any further, let me state I’m not 100% certain which cast members played which characters. The IMDb doesn’t have all of that information, but I’ll do the best I can. If I get any of them wrong, let me know and I’ll edit in the corrections.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
The CGI sharks show up early in a great scene I would have loved to have been longer. The sharks attack a riverboat singles cruise by getting onto the boat via its paddlewheel. That’s one of the most clever shark movie bits I’ve seen.
The sharks are said to be bull sharks, who can live in fresh water. So...science. The shark effects range from adequate CGI creations to what appeared to be some kind of puppets to really awful video game-like effects when the sharks swim underwater. This would be a concern if the characters weren’t so much more interesting than the sharks, always something I like to see in these movies.
College student Tara Mitchell [played by Cassie Steele], who was the science whiz kid in high school, has now changed to a business major to help run the family hardware store. Which is not what her dad Ray [Miles Doleac] wanted for her. Her fear of failure plays well against her father’s desire that she follow her dream and not be stuck in their small town. This is very believable drama and the two actors run with it.
Among the other positive characters are Eric [Tahj Vaughans], who had a unrequited crush on Tara when they were in school; Eric’s friend [?], a devotee of the Shark Bite movies mentioned in this movie; plucky TV reporter Alison Harting [Michelle West]; and the town lawman [Nathan O'Neil Smith]. All perform heroically in spite of their understandable fear of getting eaten.
Less positive characters include Jason London [Jason London] as the star of those Shark Bite movies come to town to sign autographs and promote his next film; Big Bill Braddock [Marco St. John, who chews the scenery as the southern-fried fish rodeo promoter]; and Possum [Kevin J. McGrath], the two-time winner of the rodeo who’s willing to cheat to hold on to his title.
The action and tension are fairly constant. Whenever they slow a bit, it’s for solid character scenes. The solution to the shark attacks involves courage, ingenuity and luck. Bonus points for the cameo appearances in the first and last scenes. They had me laughing in sheer delight. Well played. Well played.
If I have any quibble with Talley’s work to date, it’s that every one of these three movies has a death I would categorize as “just plain mean.” Only in one of these movies did I feel the death was dramatically justified. The other two deaths were simply pointless exercises in gratuitous misery and bloodletting.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
Shaped like a demented starfish, a monster 5-headed shark terrorizes the open ocean before invading the beaches of Puerto Rico, endangering the once peaceful island paradise.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
First off, forget that starfish stuff. It would have been a pretty cool look for the monster, but it’s not in this movie. What we get are four heads up front and a fifth head on the tail. I’ll credit the CGI folks for doing an excellent job with the four heads, but that tail-head never doesn’t look silly.
So much wrong with this movie. 2-Headed Shark Attack has many good moments. 3-Headed Shark Attack was a very good movie. This one is a fail on every level with so many characters making dumb choices over and over and over again. You could predict who was gonna die from where they stood on the various boats or what they did or said before becoming shark food. I won’t dwell on the stupid “black guy dies first” cliche, though, to be fair, the shark actually eats a boatload of nameless models and photographers first.
None of the characters are engaging. None of the acting is anything other than journeyman. The one bit of character growth comes when the head of the aquarium pushing these people to go after the shark so he can exhibit it risks his own life to save two members of the team. Of course, because he didn’t notice his foot was tangled up in the rope attached to the life-saving spear he gets dragged off the boat and into the multiple mouths of the shark.
There’s no explanation given for this creature, other than multiple heads have been known to occur in nature. A reference to Cerberus of Greek mythology describes the three-headed hell hound as a two-headed hell hound. 3-Headed Shark Attack laid the cause of that monster’s mutation on the garbage and pollution in the ocean and then cleverly used that to dispatch the beast.
Even the climax is anti-climatic. The shark gets blown up, but you don’t see anything other than an explosion from under the water and some blood in the water. Bruno’s character survives hooking the big fish with explosives and being taken for a ride, but we don’t see how he survives. Did the filmmakers run out of money?
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
I have an admittedly low standard for recommending cheesy monster movies, mostly because almost any cheesy monster movie can be fun if you watch it in the right frame of mind. There is no right frame of mind that would make 5-Headed Shark Attack worth watching even once. Avoid it.
Sharknado Week picked up considerably with the July 31 premiere of Mississippi River Sharks, the third shark movie from director Misty Talley. Her previous films were Zombie Shark (aka Shark Island) and Ozark Sharks (aka Summer Shark Attack). In just these three movies, I’ve become a big fan of Talley. Writer Marcy Holland also wrote Ozark Sharks. Here’s the IMDb summary:
Sharks attack a fish rodeo on the Mississippi River, and it is up to a group of locals to stop them.
Before we go any further, let me state I’m not 100% certain which cast members played which characters. The IMDb doesn’t have all of that information, but I’ll do the best I can. If I get any of them wrong, let me know and I’ll edit in the corrections.
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
The CGI sharks show up early in a great scene I would have loved to have been longer. The sharks attack a riverboat singles cruise by getting onto the boat via its paddlewheel. That’s one of the most clever shark movie bits I’ve seen.
The sharks are said to be bull sharks, who can live in fresh water. So...science. The shark effects range from adequate CGI creations to what appeared to be some kind of puppets to really awful video game-like effects when the sharks swim underwater. This would be a concern if the characters weren’t so much more interesting than the sharks, always something I like to see in these movies.
College student Tara Mitchell [played by Cassie Steele], who was the science whiz kid in high school, has now changed to a business major to help run the family hardware store. Which is not what her dad Ray [Miles Doleac] wanted for her. Her fear of failure plays well against her father’s desire that she follow her dream and not be stuck in their small town. This is very believable drama and the two actors run with it.
Among the other positive characters are Eric [Tahj Vaughans], who had a unrequited crush on Tara when they were in school; Eric’s friend [?], a devotee of the Shark Bite movies mentioned in this movie; plucky TV reporter Alison Harting [Michelle West]; and the town lawman [Nathan O'Neil Smith]. All perform heroically in spite of their understandable fear of getting eaten.
Less positive characters include Jason London [Jason London] as the star of those Shark Bite movies come to town to sign autographs and promote his next film; Big Bill Braddock [Marco St. John, who chews the scenery as the southern-fried fish rodeo promoter]; and Possum [Kevin J. McGrath], the two-time winner of the rodeo who’s willing to cheat to hold on to his title.
The action and tension are fairly constant. Whenever they slow a bit, it’s for solid character scenes. The solution to the shark attacks involves courage, ingenuity and luck. Bonus points for the cameo appearances in the first and last scenes. They had me laughing in sheer delight. Well played. Well played.
If I have any quibble with Talley’s work to date, it’s that every one of these three movies has a death I would categorize as “just plain mean.” Only in one of these movies did I feel the death was dramatically justified. The other two deaths were simply pointless exercises in gratuitous misery and bloodletting.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
Look for the second part of my Sharknado Week reviews once I’ve had a chance to see and reflect on Wednesday’s Trailer Park Shark and Thursday’s Toxic Shark. Part three will cover Saturday’s Empire of the Sharks and Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. I think I’m gonna need a bigger blog.
I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment of Free Comic Book Day Friday. See you then.
© 2017 Tony Isabella
I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment of Free Comic Book Day Friday. See you then.
© 2017 Tony Isabella
Tony,
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of bull sharks in the Mississippi, it is not altogether uncommon for bull sharks to be spotted or caught in my neck of the woods at St. Louis, MO and Alton, IL. I think the largest caught around here was 5' and under 100 lbs.
Glad I wasn't the only one who thought that Mississippi River Sharks was fun and clever, Tony. You and I seem to be of similar mind about a lot of these things. You should gather all your reviews at some point and put them into a book -- so I could keep these straight and remember which ones are good from year to year. With the consistent exploitation titles, I get them confused after a while. ;-)
ReplyDelete