Megalodon

Change is inevitable.  Edifices rise and fall through the ages as the sands of time shift beneath our feet, be they lively or rotting.  The one thing that I’ve come to rely on, though, is The Asylum cranking out some quick, low-budget flick in time to capitalize on the release of some major blockbuster.  In this case, three days after The Meg came out, SyFy premiered Megalodon, which tries to closely mimic the former’s formula.

Much like The Meg, we get an undersea rescue of the crew of an endangered submarine.  This time, though, the US Navy heads below the waves to retrieve the surviving crew members of a Russian sub that had been attacked by what seems like a massive shark.  (And, just as in The Meg, we get a decision regarding the fate of the rest of the crew by those able to get to safety in time, so don’t worry: we’re keeping true to our sources here.)  The rescue team, though, then finds themselves at risk of attack from what soon is revealed to be a megalodon, a giant shark species erstwhile though to be extinct.  Insert shenanigans here.

From pretty early on, it was clear that this particular Asylum outing was one of the lazier ones.  As you can see from the poster above, Michael Madsen (our boy bud from Kill Bill and so many other awesome roles) has been given top billing, and this holds true on the film’s IMDb page as well, but he’s not in all that much of it, honestly.  He plays an admiral here (with the longest, most unkempt hair a current or former admiral has ever sported), and in typical Madsen fashion when he doesn’t really care about the project, he mostly sleepwalks through his lines here, barely feigning interest in what’s happening.  The rest of the acting runs the gamut from overwrought to possibly actually made of wood, though Dominic Pace, who plays the naval captain basically in charge of the operation, does very well for himself here.

Director James Thomas hasn’t expanded his artistic scope much in the months since Tomb Invader, as one would likely expect in such a short amount of time, his camera going through the motions rather mechanically.  The script from fellow Asylum vet Thunder Levin (responsible for the first four Sharknado scripts, as well as American Warships (the Battleship knock-off) and something called Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood!) and Koichi Petetsky (whose resume has informed me that the franchise begun by 2-Headed Shark Attack is onto 6-Headed Shark Attack this year, so that’s fun) is just as rote as the direction, keeping things as stock and unmemorable as possible.  The visual effects are cheap and stiffer than the worse actors, making the ocean resemble a strangely-striated wake pool and the title creature remain almost as motion-eschewing as the shark model from Jaws 3D (you know the one).  The prop guns are very clearly undersized and artificial, shining in their seemingly black-plastic-y glory.  Everything is just as chintzy and half-hearted as one would likely expect from an Asylum production made for SyFy.

The saving grace is that things are so ramshackle and ridiculous that they’re actually pretty funny to watch.  Unlike some of its ilk, Megalodon is one of those Asylum mockbusters that allows you to have a good time, even if it’s only through joyous mocking of what’s happening on screen.  So if you’ve got the yen and some minor booze handy, give it a go for a lark.  No harm here.