Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus |
  • USA • 2009 • 88m •   • Directed by: Jack Perez. • Starring: Debbie Gibson, Lorenzo Lamas, Vic Chao, Jonathan Nation, Mark Hengst, Michael Teh, Chris Haley, Sean Lawlor, Dustin Harnish, Dean Kreyling, Stephen Blackehart, Dana DiMatteo, Myles Cranford. • Music by: Chris Ridenhour.      A huge iceberg calves that holds a megalodon (mega shark) and a giant octopus frozen inside it. Deployment of a LFAS (low frequency automatic sonar) unit causes it to shatter. The two behemoths thaw and return to life. The shark terrorizes the California coast while the octopus creates havoc things near Japan. A group of three oceanographers put together a plan to draw the beasts into a trap with pheromones.
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Review:
The plot's more or less the same than what you'd expect. Maybe less. You know, giant prehistoric monsters escape and wreck havoc for no particular reason, because that's just what giant prehistoric monsters are supposed to do. This time, a giant megalodon shark that can swallow the Golden Gate Bridge and an octopus that can sink a sea-based airfield platform have escaped from the frigid ice of the north. A cast of hammy actors start reciting monologues about how 'special and dangerous' these things are, how they must be captured for research, and when they cannot be caught or destroyed, it seems there's no better solution that to pit them against each other in a fight to the death.
The 'film' defies logic. Even low-budget monster-on-the-loose movie logic. For example, in a scene that had me laughing for nearly a whole minute, the giant shark swallows a passing commercial airliner by jumping approximately thirty-five thousand feet straight up into the air. And I also wonder just what possessed the fifty-million-year-old carnivore to take a bite out of the Golden Gate Bridge when there's plenty of big humpback whales and other marine animals to snack on. I guess the filmmakers had it in their minds that it was to be cool. Well, the Golden Gate Bridge was pulled down by a giant octopus in the film "It Came from Beneath the Sea" from 1955 and while I didn't think that movie was enormous impressive, it was still worlds better on entertainment than this. How can artillery shot into the air go underwater and simply explode in the general area right around the giant creatures? How can a creature who can snap a battleship in half with one bite have so much difficulty breaking a small submarine in two? Why would you try to bait giant carnivores by creating a pheromone signature using Gatorade when a big heap of fresh meat would do? Or perhaps an airplane, since they seem to like those. And also, if these two giant monsters were frozen in combat and want nothing more than to kill each other than anything else, why is it that when they're released simultaneously, do they go their separate ways? Making up? As good as guess as any, I suspect. Maybe I missed a piece of dialogue that explained this. I was falling pretty deep into slumber during this.
Of course, lots of movies defy logic. But even if this film made sense, which it does not, it would still be bad. The cast stars actors who have been good before and may be good again someday, but were just awful here and I think it's because they're aware that they're in an awful film, the big projects are given to the big stars, they don't have to put much of an effort because they know it'd be for nothing, and they just take the paycheck. Lorenzo Lamas, for example, has never been so mediocre. And he looks flat out absurd as a government agent who's dressed to look like a cross between Tony Montana and Steven Seagal-'whose career I think his' is starting to resemble.
And CGI effects for the monsters whom we seldom ever see? I've seen worse and better on the sci-fi channel. But as poor as the effects are, it would have been better to see more of them than just more monologues and ridiculous love scenes and pacing by the bland, impersonal characters who don't interest us for a second.
Take my word for it. Those of you who want to test the movie to see if it's as bad as it sounds, do not. You will regret it. When I sat down to watch this film, I found myself inevitably riffing it like our heroes from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" because in the past, that sort of unlabored the burden. Here, not even that helped. I made jokes at everything I saw and still, I was suffering. In fact, I was so depressed and appalled by this atrociously bad excuse of a film that immediately after viewing it, I had to pop in my DVD of Hitchcock's masterpiece "Vertigo" (1958) just to remind myself of what a true motion picture is.
However, there may be one good thing going for this movie? You know that chronic sleeplessness called insomnia? Well, I may have just discovered a cure for that. Perhaps if you can't sleep and this piece of garbage (I seldom use that when describing a movie, but I had to here) is on, maybe it'll help put you to sleep. However, you may still wake up in a depression and regret what you did. So, you have been warned. Those of you who have not seen this movie, I envy you.
Review by TheUnknown837-1 from the Internet Movie Database.
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