Made for TV Asylum production. Do I need to continue?A wealthy cartel owner (Patrick Bergin) kidnaps a half dozen or so people to play a shark survival game. About 30 minutes into the film they figure out they were all somehow involved in his son's death. The shark footage look very different from the rest of the film, i.e. Ed Wood inserting stock footage into a film.Acting was sad as well as the dialogue. Original title was "Shark Week."
... View MoreZombie Shark was disappointing because it had a very interesting idea, one of SyFy's most original. Unfortunately, the execution was severely underwhelming, not just being visually cheap and poorly written and acted but what seemed like an original idea was executed in typical SyFy shark movie fashion, with no imagination whatsoever and only occasional splashes of fun.The best thing about it is Roger J. Timber as Lester, Lester is a fun character, and Timber is amusing while never overplaying and always realising what type of movie he's in. Becky Andrews is sensual and doesn't overegg or underplay either, she actually gives the movie some heart, as does Laura Cayouette. The ending is also quite unexpected and poignant, as is the dynamic between Andrews and Cayouette.Sadly, the rest of the acting is poor, with the usual mix of overplaying and blandness. While it was laudable to try to give the characters back-story, some were written in an underdeveloped and overwrought way, and the movie never properly allows us to care or learn enough about them. Scripting is lazy and corny in a way that can only be achieved by SyFy, and the direction is flat.But the worst assets of Zombie Shark are the story and the production values. Really wanted to like the story here because the concept was intriguing, but while it starts nicely the further the movie progresses the lazier, cheesier and more formulaic it gets, also making the mistake that most SyFy movies make of trying so hard to be over the top and stupid but in a painfully predictable and less than fresh way that it becomes tiresome, the scenes with the parents are pointless and bog the movie down pacing-wise. While I have seen worse-looking movies, that doesn't stop Zombie Shark from looking cheap, and the drab filming and sometimes sloppy editing aren't even the worst parts. That would be the shark effects, especially the very unfinished-looking mechanical ones. They exude little personality either, no menace, not even any unintentional goofiness, none of them even acted zombie-like, and the attack scenes apart from one mildly amusing one are sloppily edited, too brief and devoid of suspense or sense of horror. Such a waste of good potential! Overall, has its moments but wastes an intriguing concept with underwhelming execution. 3/10 Bethany Cox
... View MoreLucio Fulci's Zombi 2 had a scene where a zombie takes on a shark at sea. The strikingly most original thing about that movie. Maybe that was the inspiration for Zombie Shark or maybe it was the more recent Zombeavers which almost the Citizen Kane for this genre of films.Three hot girls and one boyfriend go for weekend island getaway in the Gulf of Mexico. As Becky Andrews in a hot bikini she discovers a dead shark washed ashore that suddenly comes to life as Zombie Shark and attacks the humans around the beach.It seems the island is near a secret research facility working on 'Project Bruce' involving regenerating human flesh based on shark DNA. However Bruce gets loose infects other sharks who become zombified. When they attack humans they come back as George Romero style lumbering zombies.A mercenary joins to the girls to stop Bruce and other sharks in infecting the rest of the worldThe story is mildly intriguing, it rolls along nicely. Andrews looks great in a bikini, there is some comic relief here and there. So far so Zombeavers. However the production values are on par with the usual SyFy channel output. The CGI sharks are cheap and nasty looking, the mechanical sharks are not much better and there is one rubber shark head that looks like plastic puppet. The story goes from being inspired (lumbering zombie gets head lopped off by a flying shark) to downright horrendous.Still the movie is crazy, surreal, horrible even good in parts. Its worth watching with a lazy eye.
... View MoreArriving on a secluded island getaway, a group of friends find the area's research center has lost control of a shark infected with a gruesome virus turning other sharks into mindless zombie sharks and must hold off the attacks in order to escape.This one was slightly disappointing but didn't really slip down as low as it could've. What really seems to hold this one back here is the rather bland CGI here, which seems to be going off even worse than ever and really manages to showcase some of the absolute worst effects in the scene. These sharks look absolutely ridiculous with wholly unnatural swimming moments as they seem to swim with a rapid-fire back-and-forth motion that captures none of the grace and fluidity of the real thing, not to mention the fact that they tend to jerk around and sputter across frame at such distractingly unnatural speeds that there's no doubt about their origins. None of these, though, are as bad as the fact that the film decides to go for entirely CGI backgrounds during each of their scenes, so the lame pixelated images are just wholly unconvincing even before putting a badly-rendered shark on the scene, and on the whole this one really offers up very few moments where there's anything remotely natural or believable about the effects here and it had done a far better job than expected recently with this format. What works against these effects even more is the fact that this one had a lot more going for it elsewhere, since that just makes the badness of the effects stick out that much more. The biggest plus here with this one is the fact that there's a ravel novel and intriguing story here that seems to be so natural and logical that it's a wonder it hadn't been done before, for this one utilizes the concept of a zombie virus and turns it into an animal attack effort which is quite enjoyable here with this one really getting some nice work in building off the effects and motivations of the virus. This is accomplished through the scientist actually being on the side of humanity for once and not trying to create the zombies for their own purpose and they get out of hand, but an actual and honest reason for creating them and then actually trying to do the right thing here and clean it up which is a nice touch. Likewise, there's also the film's nicely done action scenes here which are all of the shorter attacks but still the frequency here is enough to make them work as this one goes for all sorts of ambushes in the shallow beaches and a few feet away from shore, while the zombie attacks that come about offer a nice way to get something going out of the water where it's feasible to be safe from the sharks, as well as providing this one with some solid gore as well. Overall these here were enough to make it watchable but not enough to hold off the big flaws here.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and mild drinking references.
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