Empire of the Sharks

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source: Empire of the Sharks

Asylum got lazy with this one, which had a great gimmick, and good ideas. First, what we needed here, was the Army of Sharks used more. And at better pacing. The first hour is boring talking and silent sailing, while the time could have been used more. Like, for starters, the henchmen needed more screentime, starting with Asian Martial Arists. Then the nechmen needed consistency. I thought Budget Iggy Pop was the one using the. Power Glove (Avenging Fist was a great movie). But he was into matchete all along, and everyone was using the shark-gloves? And what's with his death? Where was the SECOND shark? Or what happened to Free Dive Lady? I assume she ended up dead, but... There was also a big fuss made about releasing and backing the sharks. When Guy swam to the base and Girl withdrawn the sharks, I thought that was made to get dramatic tension. And later the sharks were just out, not shown? And where did the big tire come along the 3-tire construct for throwing people to the sharks? Also, what happened to the submarine? One death could have been someone placing the bombs, then the marine gets crushed by the sharks. The bombs were never utilized, and they just sank the whole city - that was an option all along? Coming to the sharks, they just jumped. That got boring quickly. Put some creativity in next time. Rip the arms, or the head! Not just do a tackle. I also though Girl was the sibling of Boy? Ye, characters were this undeveloped. I had no problem with the production-value. Not the acting, or the CGI, not even the obvious floating stages (some cheap CGI city-backgorund like in Dinotopia would have been welcomed for some shots of course), and as said the ideas are there - you needed a proofreader to chisel the script, simply said.

In the genre of B-crap movies with strange concepts and wanna-be-actors, it's actually not bad. Weirdly enough John Savage's plays the evil bad guy who tries to control this "Waterworld"-world. The CGI of course is horrible and I have never seen a ship that flies when bombed :-D.

I love bad movies. I especially love bad shark movies. But this wasn't the good kind of bad, it was just bad. Some of the actors were actually not terrible, others were so bad it was painful. The plot on the other hand was confusing. This felt like the third or forth part in a series, not a standalone movie, and it was difficult to follow along with what was happening on screen in any given moment, with a horrible script, monstrously bad half-rendered CGI sharks, and someone decided they should growl for some reason?? In short, even if you love bad shark movies like me, you probably won't like this.

EMPIRE OF THE SHARKS is listed as a comedy but you wouldn't find any humour here, at least of the intentional variety. Instead this is a typical Asylum movie, shoddily made and shot on the cheap, although less stupid than something like s a SHARKNADO sequel. The whole idea for the film is a psychic ability to control sharks and have them sail out of the water to attack your enemies, but it's not really developed much beyond this point. More interesting is the post-apocalyptic world which riffs on WATERWORLD and is fairly well portrayed on a tight budget. A shame there's a lack of interesting characters to prevent viewer involvement in the story.