Review“Listen, screw these environmentalists. When I give the order shoot to kill!” - Allan BaxterEmma MacNeil, a rogue oceanographer or some such, is checking out whales in a mini sub somewhere in Alaska near a glacier, as whales are naturally attracted to frozen water. Before you can say “holy tropical stock footage batman” a military helicopter (that looks remarkably like a civilian one) drops a device that turns out to be a low frequency active sonar (LFAS) or some such. The LFAS plays havoc with the whale sonars and they are soon ramming into the glacier in a frenzy of ice cube making. Naturally the glacier starts to disintegrate under the onslaught and Emma MacNeil, who wears Goth fingernail varnish for no apparent reason, is hard pressed controlling her sub. Meanwhile upstairs the helicopter that launched mayhem explodes for no reason, in one of those moments you wish they had of used some sort of stock footage, and the glacier comes crashing down like Lilo's career releasing, gulp, a giant octopus and a megalodon of improbable size. Emma catches a glimpse of the prehistoric behemoths but puts it down to the pre dinner sherry she had prior to piloting the sub or something. Before you can say “holy unrealistic rubber models batman” the two titans of the deep are terrorising the oceans of the world in a frenzy of poorly conceived CGI attacks. Naturally Emma, some Irish dude, and a Japanese guy, are the world's last hope … okay we're rooted! You know I've been sweating on catching this movie ever since I saw the awesome trailer that held out such delights of mayhem for our viewing pleasure. Quite how I still wanted to see the movie after noting it was another effort from The Asylum remains a mystery, but come hell or high water I was going to catch it. And I'm reporting that I might just have seen the worse movie to be released this Century, there are simply no redeeming features to this half arsed effort at putting people to sleep. Forget “so bad it's good”, this is so bad that it's terrible. Where do you start with how truly awful this movie is, anyone giving it a good review has their snout in the Asylum trough folks or they have seen about five movies in total and hence have no comparison available. Guess with the special effects that might just have been contrived by someone's red headed cousin on their Commodore Vic 20 computer. The special effects are so bad that the movie producers threw their collective hands in the air like they just didn't care and simply recycled the few attempts at CGI they had in the can again and again and again. It was like one of those television series with the very small budget, where the same shots were used in each and every episode. By my count the giant octopus lost two tentacles in battle with the mega shark, but in each subsequent scene it had the full compliment of eight, see what happens when you recycle folks! Nothing like repeating the same scene over and over again to elicit boredom in viewers. The light at the end of the tunnel here is that at least we don't have to sit through more inept attempts at setting back the effects industry by a couple of decades. On the bright side of the repeated shark fin, at least looking at the wonderfully inept CGI repeats took time out from the acting that was phoned in from the dark side of the moon during a particularly bad solar flare. Deborah Gibson (Emma MacNeil) just grins like an idiot throughout the movie. Plane destroyed by the shark, Gibson is smiling like she is about to take second place at the special Olympics, oil platform attacked by giant octopus, you guessed it Gibson is smiling. Actually in one memorable scene Gibson's character bonks the Japanese scientist in a broom closet or some such, real Uwe Boll WTF moment there, and you guessed it she's smiling inanely. Matching Gibson's attempt at worst actress award ever are Lorenzo Lamas (Allan Baxter) that turns in a performance as a military intelligence type that is straight out of South Park, Vic Chao (Seiji Shimada) one of the Japanese characters who only ever speaks English in a broad American accent, and Sean Lawlor (Lamar Sanders) who's fighting the man by, uhmm, helping the U.S military, Lawlor should have known better. Naturally there's holes galore in the plot here, guess it goes without saying in a “B” grade creature feature really, but The Asylum take it to new levels of incompetence. And no I'm not just talking the scene where they cocked up the green screen completely leading to much mirth for all. In one memorable scene we have what is clearly stock footage of a U.S battleship firing it's main guns straight ahead, which would have been cool except the shark was attacking from the side at the time. One wonders with this amount of incompetence how the U.S navy manages to get it's ships out of harbour yo! I was also deeply impressed with the megalodon logistics of leaping a few hundred metres into the air, and I'm being kind, to take down a full throttle airliner … air meg baby! But the cream on top of this particular mush pie is the Scientists who decided they can use pheromones to get the giant octopus into Tokyo bay and the mega shark into San Francisco bay. Well okay with you so far, except they never explain what the hell they are going to do after achieving this particular manoeuvre. I'm assuming the House of Mouse would swoop in to set up new theme parks or something. Naturally things don't go plan, did I need to say that, and the titan shark, clearly suffering some shore leave issues, attacks the Golden Gate bridge in frustration, which admittedly isn't something you see everyday. For a good result, take a shoot of tequila every time there's a plot issue, you should be rolling on the floor by about the twenty minute mark with this fisherman's basket of ineptitude. But what really sets Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus apart from the “B” grade pack is it's ability to bore the Audience senseless. Say what you want about an Ed Wood epic or a Uwe Boll classic, but by heck you have to admit they keep you entertained in the ghastly awful reality of their movies. The Asylum fails even this test. There simply aren't enough creature attacks, the CGI scenes are used over and over, and the titular thriller knock-down tussle takes all of about three minutes. In the interim we have Gibson grinning like a loon, 10 minutes of Scientists mixing ingredients till they get the shiny result that simply says success, and Lorenzo Lamas attempting to get a gig on South Park. I haven't been this bored since I tried to sit through New Moon, at least I switched off the player on the twitard effort, alas I was like a deer caught in the headlights of the awfulness that is the Asylum effort at ineptitude engineering. Okay way over the limit here, Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus sucks the life out of the universe, anyone saying different should re-evaluate what they are doing. Since we don't care about getting screeners or any other stuff from the Distributors, I'm quite happy to say that the Asylum have made one of the worse movies ever to see the light of day. Avoided like a social disease baby, you'll thank me for the advice.
ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... Early entry in worse movie of the Century award
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