Random Movie: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

The word “versus” is usually reserved for boxing matches, Supreme Court cases, and film titles that begin with the name Godzilla or Gamera. I imagine that this film was intended to entertain the same head space as other giant monster classics, but Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus falls short of even that minimalistic criteria.

This flick comes to us curtsey of The Asylum, a direct-to-DVD company with a rather dubious track record. Mostly, they make cheaply and horribly produced movies with titles suspiciously similar to big-budget blockbusters. Such movies include Transmorphers, Death Racers, Sunday School Musical, and The Day the Earth Stopped, most likely hoping that confused consumers hunting for the latest releases will buy their movies by accident. I'm almost amazed by a company who's marketing strategy seems to have been devised by some giant, carnivorous plant. But I'm not talking about those flicks, I'm talking about a movie with a plot and production values that are laughable even by B-movie standards. The story, if you can call it that, centers around an oceanic researcher named Emma (Deborah Gibson) who is looking way worse in this movie than an otherwise attractive 39-year-old woman should. On an unauthorized expedition, Emma witnesses our titular shark and octopus escaping from within a frozen glacier due to a separate but equally unauthorized military sonar experiment. Apparently, these two behemoths have survived, frozen in this icy prison, for several million years. Of course, no one believes her claims until the two titans start their respective rampages, attacking oil refineries and the like. This includes a side-splittingly hilarious scene where the mega shark leaps several thousand feet from the water to attack a jet-liner in mid flight.

Eventually, the military takes Emma into custody and transports her to some kind of factory or water treatment plant, that is supposed to pass for an Air Force Base, to devise a plan to destroy both monsters. There she meets Alan (Lorenzo Lamas) and I'm not sure if he has any actual military rank, but he does fill the role of ass-hole government stooge for this picture. (Come on, Lorenzo, I thought you were a renegade.) The military is, of course, completely unable to harm either creature with conventional weapons and it's up to the scientists to lure the shark and octopus toward one another so they can kill each other, reaffirming the theory that the only thing capable of killing a giant monster is another giant monster. The second half of the movie is composed almost entirely of unconvincing CG effects that would have been laughed out of a Play Station game, and scenes of scientists and officers yelling at one another across big tables.

This movie fails on every front, acting, writing, special effects, but at least, in it's own terrible way, it's consistent. Even the otherwise boring scenes of people doing nothing besides talking and arguing strategies are lifted by awful performances and some howlingly bad dialogue. If you can stomach some really bad movies or take any kind of masochistic satisfaction in sitting through a cinematic train-wreck, then give Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus a watch. You won't be disappointed, well, you will be disappointed, but that's kind of the point.