Thursday 16 October 2014

2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

A group of students studying at sea for a semester end up stranded on a sinking island when their boat is attacked by a giant 2-headed shark.



Or to put it more honestly...


A group of students, who are vertically all ridiculously attractive and/or have fake breasts, are for some reason seeing a semester on a boat learning about ancient nautical equipment, and sunbathing.
When their boat is damaged by a shark which is either absolutely massive, or just kind-of shark sized, they are forced to take refuge on a nearby island, where they help themselves to everything from gas cans to speedboats, while continuing to find reasons to go in the water and get picked off by the rubber heads of the pathetically CGIed beast.


Damn. That was supposed to just be a parody of the synopsis, but I seem to have inadvertently written most of the review!

What can I say, it's a low budget creature feature from The Asylum, staring 30-something's posing as students. Now, I'm sorry to bring up the fake breasts again, but how do students afford implants? Sorry digressing...

Why are they at sea for a semester? Well, I looked it up (yes, I know, I might be over thinking the 2-headed shark movie...) and it turns out "semester at sea" is actually a thing. A thing involving a massive cruse ship that tours the world, allowing students to visit various countries as part of their normal learning. What it isn't, is about a dozen students on a medium sized leisure boat, learning about 16th century navigational equipment... but that's what we have here!

Oh, and the boat with a dozen or so paying students has 5 staff... How can that ratio possibly pay??? Sorry, doing it again.

The shark, as I've mentioned, changes size. This is probably there seem to be several models, both physician and digital, used. I spotted at least 2 different physical models for close ups, and a fair few cgi ones ranging from photo realistic to Bruce from Finding Nemo.

In the opening sequence, the shark is big enough to swallow a water skier with each mouth (the number of occasions the shark is able to attack things in twos is remarkable) at other times, small enough to engage in a knife fight against a single person (the person has the knife, the shark doesn't).

My favorite laugh-out-loud moment was when the shark used its heads to pull someone in two like a Christmas cracker, but a special mention has to go to one character who, having fallen over during a ground tremor, gets a slight cut on his leg, disabling him as a fairly major plot point, and causing him to groan as though auditioning for a job in dubbing porn.

Speaking of the ground tremors, at one point the island our students are on shakes violently, and a crack opens up in the ground, prompting them to all start shouting "what was that???" As though the very concept of an earthquake was alien to them.

Did I enjoy the movie? I think you can tell I did; sadly I'll never enjoy one of these movies to the fullest extent again as, since seeing Birdemic: Shock and Terror it has become the very high bar against which they will all now be measured, but yes, I enjoyed it.

The great thing with The Asylum's creature features is that they always commit to them fully. They may write ridiculous concepts, then hire terrible actors, and underpaid FX guys who clearly don't give a fuck about their craft, but they never set out to make anything other than the best movie they can make. Which is why their failure is always so entertaining.

I'm going to recommend this one, but the acid test is simple.

If you think you're the kind of person who might enjoy a movie called "2-Headed Shark Attack", you are correct. If on the other hand, you think you're likely to hate a movie called "2-Headed Shark Attack" you are correct.

Best line "This is a very environmentally friendly ecosystem".




Disclaimer:
If you look through the archives, you'll see that I've been using "Bought from Poundland" as a tag since at least 2011.


At the end of October 2013 I decided that all of my 2014 movies would be purchased from Poundland, and began buying up horror movies, to ensure I would have enough come October 2014.

In March 2014 I took a part time job at Poundland.

In accordance with the companies social media policy, in September 2014 I contacted Poundland's social media team to check that I would be okay to carry on with my plan to use the "bought from Poundland" tag.

I have been given the go-ahead on condition that I make the following clear:


All the reviews on this blog are entirely the opinion of Will Tingle, the reviews are not endorsed by Poundland in any way and (as should be obvious from some of the more scathing ones) are certainly not reviews I have been paid to write.

In short: The views expressed in this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Poundland or it's owners, shareholders, or  management.

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