Film Review: Sharknado

Director: Anthony C. Ferrante

A 2013 made for TV movie for the Syfy channel in America that has made a reputation for disaster movies with a comedic twist due to cheap special effects and hammy scripts. The inspiration mainly came from the disaster movies of the 1970's that were genuinely made to be good films but ended up being dreadful and gained a following of cult fans for their shoddy quality. After much hype on Twitter over the name, the film brought in over 1.5 million viewers on the Syfy channel for all three showings to date.

Fin (Ian Ziering) owns a bar on the beach at a surfers paradise in California, the locals aren't concerned about a passing tornado until they release the tornado is throwing sharks onto the land. These sharks have a special taste for human blood and attack the locals, Fin takes his friend Baz (Jaason Simmons) and employee Nova (Cassie Scerbo) with him to rescue his ex-wife (Tara Reid) and daughter from the oncoming tornado. After many close shaves with sharks in the rivers of water flowing down the streets, they see the actual tornado coming over the city of Los Angeles with tornadoes swirling in its midst.

One way to escape a shark attack

It's incredibly tough to judge a movie like this, the special effects are incredibly fake and the production value clearly is low. Many scenes where the city is flooded during the storm show the sky to be a clear sunny day whilst most of the surrounding scenery is bone dry because they couldn't afford to drench the entire set. This makes for rather some comedy moments that are more than likely intentional, whilst the script is hilariously bad in parts.

One of the reasons the film is still watchable is down to the lead Ian Ziering, he gives his absolute all to every scene which carries a lot of the movie. At no point does he relent and let the movie descend into an absolute farce. After that there are very few positives to be taken from the acting, especially where Tara Reid and her over-engineered face are concerned.

1.5/4 Funny disaster movie

PS For future reference, chainsaws dont work inside sharks due to the lack of air