Film Review: SHARK WEEK (2012)

Sharks seem to be the go-to monster for a lot of horror films of the last few years and I guess they’ve run out of titles for their films as evidenced by the generic title for the film Shark Week (2012).  The film surprisingly has a couple of decent actors in Yancy Butler and Patrick Bergin who are slumming in this piece of shit of a horror film. 

Tiburon and his wife (Bergin and Butler, respectfully) have decided to gather a bunch of people together on their private island in order to force them into a gauntlet infested with sharks of all types.  It seems that they are wanting to punish the people responsible for the death of their son and since Tiburon likes sharks why not just have them get eaten one by one in the most entertaining way as possible.

The CGI is inadequate and the acting isn’t much better but I suggest this is more due to the sub par script by Liz Adams and H. Perry Horton.  The actors, at certain points, are not bad but they are saddled with such a cliché story with bad dialogue that they are simply trying to do the best they can do with what they’ve been given.  Bergin is at his worst in this film as he seems asleep at the wheel in this film (he gave a better performance in the abysmal Lawmower Man 2) but Butler (as always) seems to be the only one having any fun in this mess of a film.

Directed by Christopher Ray very little imagination is set forth and even most of the death scenes are off screen or filmed too dark and even if they weren’t marred by bad CGI this film would be a complete waste of time even for audiences that enjoy bad CGI shark movies.

Film Review: SUPER CYCLONE (2012)

When a deep sea oil drilling rig breaks into the mantel of the Earth’s crust the sudden release of heat creates a chain reaction of heating the surrounding water and changing the climate of the surrounding area creating a super cyclone that threatens the Eastern seaboard.  This is the premise behind Super Cyclone (2012) in which Ming-Na Wen is Dr. Jenna Sparks, a meteorologist, who is brought in with her colleague Dr. Percy Cavanaugh (Andy Clemence) to help the military get a hold of the situation.  Along for the ride is Travis Verdon (Nicholas Turturo), a petroleum engineer whose rig is responsible for the disaster.  The three of them must battle a plague of escalating disasters in the hopes of avoiding a super cyclone that will devastate the eastern seaboard and usher in irreversible global climate changes. 

Written and directed by Liz Adams the film suffers from a plot that should have been condensed to a thirty minute film rather than fluffed up to a feature.  Sparks, Cavanaugh, and Verdon seem to go from one disaster to the next all due to their own “stupidity.”  Turturo and Wen have no chemistry together whereas Wen and Clemence do (which is a shame since they have only a few scenes together).  This is a tedious film that lacks focus despite its simplicity.  It’s not nearly as entertaining as it should be for this type of film.

Disaster films should at least be entertaining but this film falls flat in every way including the bad CGI but most importantly the film suffers from what plagues most of these types of films which is a lack of believing that the main characters are actually whom they claim to be in the film.  You never believe Turturo is an engineer and Wen was better off a doctor of medicine in the hit T.V. show E.R. than as a meteorologist .  All in all, this is an easily forgettable film with little to offer even the most die-hard of bad CGI, disaster flicks.