Another re-review to ease down the january blues, with more “winter” shark movies.
Today is Avalanche Sharks, because everything can happen if no one says no during scripting and production, and to be fair, this exist because Sharkenado just release to a surprise sensational success, so SyFy greenlit a sequel and basically asked what kind of bullshit shark movie the internet wanted to see, eventually announcing this one as a “sequel” (again, i think someone gotta remind these companies what the word means, i think they genuinely forgot) to Sand Sharks, under the working title of “Sharkalance”. Which was changed because it was obviously gonna be.
It’s NOT an Asylum joint, but a Canadian production by Odissey Media (and other companies), and i kinda wish they did, at least i could have heard better the crap dialogue and awful exposition, and maybe the actors would have been a touch better, alongside the production values.
The problem is that this movie clearly tries to snap at the heels of Sharkenado, and would have a stupid enough idea at its core to make it a fun crap movie, in this case substituting the “shark tornado” with ghost sharks that swim in the snow and are basically embodiments of vengeful Native American people that were slaughtered by the Blue Coats, now free because someone moved the totems that acted as a seal for the vengeance seeking evil spirits.
The rest of the plot concerns the usual gaggle of teenagers and B-movie one-note stereotypes (played by tired genre and TV actors giving some fairly awful performances) that came to Mammoth Mountain for the “snow bikini contest” , as you can’t do a wet t-shirt competition in the mountains, but it’s Spring Break, it always is for these movies.
It sound dumb enough to make it kinda work in the “so bad its good” manner, but it doesn’t, and the rest of the plot doesn’t make any frigging sense, one doesn’t ask much for the plot of a movie called Avalanche Sharks, but at least i expect the events to follow some kind of logic, but no, as most of the character’s actions are completely irrelevant to the resolution of the story.
Maybe you’d think it’s the character that actually knows about the sharks and the legend to do something about it, but no, it’s the random “asian lady” that barely speaks a word and just happens to be skiing, and also randomly arrives at the very end of the film to the totems poles, for no reason fixes their position and then just leaves. This is just because they realized the runtime had reached the point needed to “excuse itself”, so yeah, whatever, now we can end this… but they can’t even do that properly, as they also pull the “unreliable narrator” card for the hell of it.
Expecting much from a movie that starts with a children’s crayon drawing of a shark in the snow is silly, even sillier than movies like these, but at least entertain me, you know? Instead this movie comes off as a frustrating bore, padded to oblivion with unfunny crap, so it comes off as it goes on forever despite barely reaching the 80 minute marks, and even so it manages to do that thanks to the credits.
There are some moments of fun when the crappy CG sharks attack, but more often than not you don’t even giggle at the bad effects or the stupid character being devoured by the “graphics” and some very bad practical special effects, you just watch in frigid apathy, and even at it’s best, you can squeeze some….seconds of mild shlocky fun from these. And frankly it feels like they were hugely underbudgeted for a movie that wants to be a gorefest, and when you see the effects, it doesn’t just feel like that. But i have seen worse looking sharks, i have. There is nudity, but nothing major.
Even for C-movies fans, i don’t really recommend this one either, as i said in my review for Ice Sharks, even though at least this movie tries a bit with the idea of ghost snow Native American sharks and it’s not as dull and lifeless. It’s a victim of wanting to be like Sharkenado, but without asking why that movie in particular was so beloved as a ridiculous “so bad it’s good” phenomenon and why it turned out funny, when many of these shark movies are just plain bad, boring crap.
Wise Cafe (International) 