Without a doubt, Sharknado is one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen (and not in a good way). I hasten to call it a movie, because it really isn’t. It’s a TV movie, made for the Syfy channel. If you’re not scared off already, Sharknado stars Tara Reid and is made by the production company The Asylum. The Asylum specializes in making low budget rip-offs of popular blockbusters. Some of The Asylum’s previous titles include The Da Vinci Treasure, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies and of course, Atlantic Rim.
They may be shameless over at The Asylum, but their formula works from a financial standpoint. In an interview with The Guardian, director Jack Perez (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus) reports that “each budget [for an Asylum production] is well under a million dollars…” Perez also mentioned in the same interview that Asylum films are made in about 12 days. Despite the shoddy quality of The Asylum’s productions, all of them have turned a profit, which is why so many have been made.
I want to make one thing very clear. I love a good B-movie and I treasure a movie that’s so bad it’s good. Unfortunately, Sharknado really doesn’t go crazy enough, at least until the last fifteen minutes, for me to recommend it. Of course, you get horrendous acting, half-rendered special effects (Batman: the Movie had better sharks!) and amateurish editing. It’s not until the climax that the movie starts going appropriately insane. I wanted sharks falling out of the sky and then being chain-sawed in half from the beginning. I wanted tornadoes to be destroyed using dynamite from the beginning. For all the Twitter buzz Sharknado has been getting, it’s pretty much dead in the water.
