Sharknado (2013) Review
Sharknado is the very best asylum / syfy TV movie i've ever seen and actually one of the only ones to rise above a 4. i'm glad to see the best one have such success--i saw it at a midnight screening in union square new york.
i hate the term guilty pleasure, because i feel no guilt when i enjoy a movie that delivers what it promises. sharknado delivers. it does not promise existential dilemma nor poignant allegory. it promises a feature length experience centered on the concept of sharks in a tornado...and succeeds.
the only real close competition from the syfy folks is air collision, which is an incredible piling on of the unbelievable and the illogical that seems conceived of by an imaginative child. like air collision, sharknado is a commendable example of how to take one event and stretch it out to feature length, which is no easy task when the event is 'sharks in a tornado' or 'two planes are about to crash in midair.'
amazingly, sharknado does not pad it's first act with drama minutiae, but quickly deliver some action and so the escalation of events really continues throughout the whole movie. and when the sharknado is finally glimpsed, it is actually pretty stunning to look at---certainly the zenith achievement of cg visual fx in a syfy movie.
intentional and unintentional humor fills the movie, and there's also stuff where i can't tell if they knew it was funny or not---such as the melodramatic monologues---but i had tears pouring down at one point i was laughing so hard. and there is a coincidence towards the end that may be the single funniest and least likely coincidence in movie history.
sharknado whirls quickly from one creative set piece to another and is engaging throughout.
a solid b picture from asylum, and their finest hour. i hope to see more at this level, because i like this energetic and creative low budget picture far more than most of the 100 million dollar pieces of junk i've seen come out of Hollywood in the last few years.