Today’s quick review: Sharknado. When a freak storm makes landfall in Los Angeles, it brings with it a rain of sharks it sucked up from the Pacific Ocean. Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering), the owner of a dockside bar, flees inland with his best friend Bas (Jason Simmons), a waitress Nova (Cassie Scerbo), and a local souse George (John Heard). The group stop by the home of Fin’s ex-wife April (Tara Reid) to get his family to safety amidst the tide of flooding and sharks.
Sharknado is a TV action horror movie with a low budget and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. With bad acting, low production values, and a ridiculous premise, Sharknado is objectively a bad movie. At the same time, Sharknado is a strangely entertaining watch. The film revels in its preposterousness and delivers shark-on-man and man-on-shark action with wild abandon.
How much you enjoy the film will depend on your willingness to embrace its absurdity. The premise is a thin excuse for shark attack-style gore in an urban setting. Many of the kills during the film are played for humor or astonishment, and these are what give the film its violent sense of fun. Not all of Sharknado’s decisions are correct ones, even given its unusual premise and tone, but it should elicit a few good laughs from a viewer with the right attitude.
Watch Sharknado if you are looking for a ridiculous, low-budget action film done right. Skip it if you have any standards regarding acting, writing, special effects, or intelligence, or if you are sensitive to gore.
3.3 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 4.0 for production quality, a 6.0 for breathing life into a low-budget film, and a 7.0 to 7.5 for enjoyability.