Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) (V)

User Rating:

3.2/10   

Director:

Jack Perez

Writer:

Jack Perez

Release Date:

26 May 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Horror

Plot:

The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea. |

Plot Keywords:

Shark | Animal In Title | Fish In Title | 3D | Oil Platform

Cast

Lorenzo Lamas	...	Allan Baxter
Deborah Gibson	...	Emma MacNeil
Vic Chao	...	Dr. Seiji Shimada
Sean Lawlor	...	Lamar Sanders
Dean Kreyling	...	US Sub Captain
Stephen Blackehart	...	US Sub Sonar Chief
Dustin Harnish	...	US Sub Helmsman
Mark Hengst	...	Dick Ritchie
Michael Teh	...	Takeo
Jonathan Nation	...	Vince
Chris Haley	...	Kenji
Dana DiMatteo	...	Marine Biologist
Dana Healey	...	Naval Officer
John Bolen	...	US Sub Weapons Officer
Larry Wang Parrish	...	Japanese Sub Captain (as Larry Parrish)

MPAA:

Rated R for some language. (special edition)

Runtime:

85 min | USA:90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Certification:

USA:Not Rated | USA:R (certificate #45362) (special edition) | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Arleta, Los Angeles, California, USA

Trivia:

In the scene where Emma, Seiji and Lamar are interrogated, Baxter (Lorenzo Lamas) describes Emma as "a woman whose career is all washed-up." This is a pun on Deborah Gibson's music career, which reached its peak with the album Electric Youth in 1989, but floundered through the 1990s.

Goofs:

Continuity: The Styrofoam cup jumps from the right hand to the left hand of Debbie Gibson's character after she awakens in the chemistry lab.

Quotes:

Dick Ritchie: [to Emma] Don't love the ocean too much, it doesn't love you back.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Making of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) (V)

Soundtrack:

Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor

I had forgotten movies could be this bad

I normally only watch the bigger budget movies with a few art house type sprinkled in, but I had heard about this title somewhere, so when I saw it at the video store I thought, what the heck? how bad could it be? The answer: Amazingly bad. Phenomenally bad. Utterly horrific. Not the worst movie ever, but close. When your movie wishes it was as good as Battlefield Earth, you know you have a problem. It wasn't even the good kind of bad, where you can laugh at the unintentional humor.

The good: Still trying to come up with something The bad: I know this is a low budget D-list movie, but come on - the effects and CGI were stunningly bad. They looked like they were done on my laptop over a weekend. They might have been acceptable in the early 90s.

To make it even worse, many of the CGI scenes were constantly repeated. Whenever the shark or octopus attacked, you usually saw it preparing or approaching for the attack several times using the exact same footage. Sometimes they even bothered to mirror image the scene to make it look different.

So many of the details were amazingly unrealistic. The dialogue was bad, the way people behaved and delivered lines, physics (as in what animals of that size could actually do), torpedoes were like firecrackers, etc.

Quality control was obviously lacking. When the shark approaches a battleship from the side, the ship is shown firing forward. Once, during a video call, for about a second a film crew member wearing a headset pops into existence beside the person on the call, and then disappears. The caller and those working in the background are obviously oblivious to this phantom man.

There was this laughably bad science scene where the main characters keep dumping vials of various colored liquids into test tubes of other colored stuff and then they all looked disappointed. This happened over and over for like 5 minutes. All without any dialogue or any clue as to what they were actually doing. We only knew they were looking for a "solution" to the problem of giant sea monsters. I guess dumping red goo into a vat of blue gunk and having it not turn a different color is not a solution to giant sea monsters. Gosh, I am glad they tried that, it might have worked! There was an embarrassingly bad romance side plot thrown in, and the build up to the final showdown was dull, and then that showdown was short and filled with repeats of the same footage over and over.

I almost never feel strongly enough about a movie to write a review, but for this one I had to. If I prevent even one person from seeing this movie, then I have done my job.