All right, since I just spent an hour and a half of my life watching Sharknado, I will do everyone the service of telling you all why you shouldn't watch it. Trust me. You'll save an hour and twenty-seven minutes of your life. Unless you want to watch a movie about sharks in a tornado over L.A. (Exactly. It sounds ridiculous.)
"Anyway. Don't ask why, but a while after I got home... I watched Sharknado, just for the hell of it. Well, it was believable enough, because I felt that instinctive pull in my gut that you feel when you want to persuade characters to do the right thing and when you feel like you know what to do in that situation. However, beyond generic horror-movie gut instinct, it was not believable at all.
Cinematographically, it was very poorly put together. The clips were all filmed in different qualities and totally different times, and most were ridiculously shaky, and the beach & flood shots seemed like something from another world, another lifetime, a news report on Katrina or something. The actors weren't really awful, but they were either super-exaggerated or completely emotionless when they should have been angry or scared or something. Also, the background plot lines about the characters had little relevance to the shark epidemic except when necessary (like Nova telling about the sharks taking her grandfather... "so I really hate sharks"). And, if it was a water storm in the Pacific, wouldn't it be a tsunami? And hasn't the name David already been used [for a hurricane]? Since when does California get tornadoes, or any kind of water storm? Why would the sharks target people? Seriously, no animal in the wild targets humans just 'cause (except maybe lions or something). For CGI, that was horrible - plus, they constantly reused animated clips of CGI sharks swimming underwater when it didn't fit the scene (shallow water in street, swimming pool). People made dumb jokes at inappropriate times. The dialogue was really fake and forced.
The one good part? The super-cute Australian surfer guy, but stupid Fin [main character] didn't bother to shoot the shark that was eating his [Australian guy's] leg off, and Aussie blew into the tornado 'cause [Fin] took too long to notice him. Besides that, things worked out too perfectly - the opportunity to save a bunch of children from a sinking school bus threatened by sharks? The fact that Fin just had ammo in his car for some reason? Nova knowing how to shoot a gun? Being able to easily steal a car? Not getting caught by the cops while speeding - because they had stolen a car off a movie-set lot, so it had Nitro? Yeah, right. And the fact that all of Fin's family - and Nova, too, so Fin's son Matt would have a girlfriend - survived the attack made it too good to be true.
Well, I watched it, and even if it was bad for a [supposedly] horror flick, it taught me about film and how to make a good one."
excerpt taken from journal; December 28, 2013
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