Review – Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

In our first review of SyFy channel movies it’s important to establish that we love bad movies, thanks to long nights with MST3K.  That said, there’s good bad, and bad-bad.  This movie is bad-bad.  The film is so bad, the writerdirector Jack Perez changed his name to the pseudonym Ace Hannah for this film.

“Mega shark vs Giant Octopus” is a surprisingly boring disaster film from the Schlockbuster team of The Asylum. Considering the movie revolves around the promise of a giant shark AND a giant octopus fighting, the movie itself is very small and dull.

The movie starts with a submersible whale-watching in the Arctic ocean. At the same time, a military helicopter accidentally causes an ice cliff to shear off and release a prehistoric shark (Megaladon) and a giant octopus (Enteroctopus Dofleini). The Genius-Scientist-Noone-Believes (GSNB) Emma MacNeil, played by 80’s pop star Deborah “Debbie” Gibson, finds one of the beached whales was attacked by a giant shark. Thanks to the help of her old Irish professor, played by Sean Lawlor, and a Chinese scientist, played by frequent television actor Vic Chao, they begin to track a series of sea attacks on an oil rig, a battleship and an airplane(?!).  Thanks to the requisite Military-Commander-Up-to-No-Good (MCUNG) Allan Baxter, played by aging hipster doofus Lorenzo Lamas they concoct a cunning plan.

Their ingenious plan is to lure the creatures to the California coast using glowing bottles of pheromones.  What’s supposed to happen when they bring these incredibly dangerous animals to a highly populated area isn’t spelled out. What does happen is the beasts go on a rampage and kill thousands of people, destroying the San Fransisco Bay Bridge in the process.  Their response to this is to sigh wistfully like they lost a Boggle championship instead of causing the deaths of innocent people.

In a fit of desperation, they decide to implement the plan that was spelled out in the title of the film.  Since the two are “natural enemies”, they lead them to the Artic sea to battle to the death. While this is supposed to be the highlight of the film, any semblance of excitement dwindles away as the same three shots of the shark being choked by the octopus before having a tentacle bitten off and the shark speeding towards the camera are shown over and over again.

Which shows what really hampers the film from reaching its full potential: The budget. We’re not even talking about the cheap and boring screen-saver-quality CGI. Even the movie sets are recycled and reused. Besides the fact that the interior of a submarine looks like a warehouse with walls of buttons and switches, there’s the improbable fact that the American submarine looks exactly like the interior of the Japanese sub. 

One highlight of the film, however, is the surprising twist in the romantic relationship between the GSNB and the Chinese adviser. I say surprising, not only because it’s an inter-racial relationship, but because the two are talking and then, suddenly, start having sex in the closet of the lab.  Some might call that lack of chemistry and acting skills, but I call that passion.

In the end, the best thing to do is read the title, close your eyes and imagine the film that could have been. Mine has ninjas in it.