True story: the Ho and I have been looking forward to seeing this movie ever since the first trailer came out for it in the early parts of this year. We love summer popcorn movies. We love sharks, and we love dinosaurs, thus we love megalodons. HOW COULD IT NOT BE AMAZING?

Lots of ways, it turns out.

THE BLURB:

A massive creature attacks a deep-sea submersible, leaving it disabled and trapping the crew at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. With time running out, rescue diver Jonas Taylor must save the crew and the ocean itself from an unimaginable threat — a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark known as the Megalodon.

WHAT WORKED:

Okay…so the fundamental premise of this movie is remarkably solid, and yes, I’m being totally serious. This is, after all, essentially the same premise as Jaws or Jurassic Park. It plays. Every time.

The megalodon was dope. An 80-foot shark? YES PLEASE. The idea of a state-of-the-art research facility off the coast of China? Also dope. Especially with the under-water ring that “awww so cool and so pretty” that we KNOW is going to become a hell-hole. And the subs we get to play with are super fun.

Surprisingly, the kid in this movie is also dope. She was hilarious. She even had agency; arguably the most of any female character in the film.

It also, at the very least, delivers on its trailer and poster. You know, that shot of the giant shark swimming underneath a thousand happy beach-goers? Yeah. It delivers on that, as in that scene IS actually in the movie. Now…is that scene SCARY? Well, read on…

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

Man…where to begin? Oh, I know: the script.

This is easily one of the worst scripts in a blockbuster movie ever, and that’s…QUITE…the statement. The writing–and thus the movie as a whole–was entirely oblivious to how utterly cliche, broad, and just fake it was. And that is the real crime: the obliviousness. It doesn’t know how bad it is. See, it’s okay to have cliches and all that other stupid shit as long as you observe it; recognize the ridiculousness. This movie delivers “yes, your ex-wife is trapped on the bottom of the ocean, and you’re the only one who can get her out” and “we haven’t just let down them, we’ve let down SCIENCE” completely dead-panned and serious.

We went and saw this movie on a Friday night at the Hollywood Arclight, ie- with probably 90% of the crowd working in the industry and ooohhhh boy were they not kind to this script. We were all laughing out loud, and not because the movie meant to be funny.

It’s bad. Like, SyFy Sunday afternoon matinee bad, except you spend 150 million dollars making the movie instead of 10.

And with a script that bad, there’s not all that much you can do to make the movie work. All the characters were worthless, horrible cliches. None of the relationships were earned or genuine, you didn’t care about anyone, you WANTED the shark to win, and there were far, faaarrr too many serious scenes that had absolutely no insight into anything remotely clever, insightful or even just actually human. And Jason Statham isn’t exactly the most charming or charismatic leading man…he didn’t have the chops to elevate sub-par material, particularly on the comedy side of things.

The other reaaaalllyyy big thing that held this movie back, and it hurts me a bit to see the movie doing well, because that means studios will keep making this stupid decision: it should have been rated R. Not enough carnage, not enough blood, not enough intensity on the scare front…and this is coming from someone who isn’t the hugest consumer of horror.

It wasn’t scary enough at a PG-13.

They *clearly* did that to pander to the Chinese audience. It was, after all, co-produced with a Chinese studio. China is in the movie’s DNA from top to bottom, including much of the cast, which should be an asset, not a liability, to be clear. Next time, make a US cut that will actually scare US audiences, and leave the PG-13 for the Chinese censors. And…it’s working. The movie’s a big hit in China. Uuuuggghhhh.

Here’s the bottom line: we had fun watching the movie in the theater. Just know that it is NOT a good movie. Legitimately, one of the worst scripts I’ve ever seen in a big-budget movie, and almost worse: it doesn’t really deliver on the thrills that are expected of the genre.

4 out of 10 – big budget version of Sharknado