Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

Movie Info

Pretty much if you live in San Francisco, you’re going to die crossing the Golden Gate Bridge someday…

Two ancient enemies have been unleashed from an ice shelf where they were frozen thousands of years locked in battle.  Now it is up to Emma MacNeil (Deborah Gibson), Dr. Seiji Shimada (Nick Chao), and Lamar Sanders (Sean Lawlor) working with government liaison Allan Baxter (Lorenzo Lamas) to stop the giant shark and giant octopus before they kill any more people.  If they can’t be studied, they must be die, and if the government can’t kill them, hopefully, they’ll kill each other.

Written and directed by Jack Perez (who is credited as director as Ace Hannah), Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a kaiju action-adventure horror B-Movie.  The film had a viral marketing campaign with the trailer being one of the most viewed trailers online and the popularity of the film led to a limited theatrical release.  The film was largely panned but still was widely seen.

Before Sharknado or Sharktopus, there was Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  A throwback to bad Saturday matinee movies, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus has all the makings of a campy, fun movie…but they forget to insert much of the camp or fun.

She blinded me with SCIENCE!!!

The film is over-the-top, but it isn’t over-the-top in a way it should be.  The closest it gets is the Lorenzo Lamas “kill the shark by any means” character, but instead of loading the film with intentional stock character that spout unintelligent 1950s monster movie dialogue, the filmmaker hedges his bets and has a semi coherent script that, instead of having a real humor and faux-melodrama, tries to have actual melodrama and moments of cheering…it feels like the script needed to be inverted in tone to work.

The cast is awful (as it should be), but like the script, they try too hard to make their acting halfway realistic.  Deborah Gibson I think knows she isn’t believable as a scientist, but she still tries to be.  The gender role could have been played with cleverly if they had gone any other way with the character.  Vic Chao also comes off as a cardboard leading man trying to be a real leading man and Sean Lawlor is just creepy as the former professor who seems to be perving on his student.  As mentioned, Lorenzo Lamas is awful, but it is closer to how the character feel like they needed to be played.

I don’t know…this distinctly looks like Giant Octopus vs. Mega Shark and not the other way around

The visuals of the movie are also quite bad.  With really cheap special effects, the Mega Shark and Giant Octopus are rarely seen…and seem to move the same way each time.  Scenes not involving the shark and octopus are also poorly shot, but I do have to laugh at moments where the “scientists” are generally doing “science stuff”…that is where the movie actually works.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus was always a joke.  It was marketed as a joke, and the whole context of the film was a joke…but it is a joke that stuck and as a result a whole slew of giant-monster movies were unleashed in addition to more Mega Shark movies.  I like the goofiness of the film and the lack of serious context, but the film is bad and almost unwatchable…unless you really try hard to forget what you are seeing.  If the humans win, the people are the real losers…I wish the Mega Shark and Giant Octopus would just team up to eat them.  Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus was followed by Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus in 2010.