Sharknado (2013)

Jaws 5: The Asylum Take

A freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, causing man-eating sharks to be scooped up in water spouts and flooding the city with shark-infested seawater. Surfer and bar-owner Fin sets out with his friends to rescue his estranged wife and teenage daughter.


The Asylum are notorious for their awful films, be they rip-offs or mash-ups, but they truly have outdone themselves this time. The best way to describe this film is as the disaster movie equivalent to The Room, due to both films being so unbelievably stupid that they end up becoming bloody hilarious.

But regardless of the laugh factor, this film is awful all round. The effects are some of the worst you will see onscreen, and accomplish little other than highlighting that, despite the better computer equipment that is on offer nowadays, Jaws did better effects nearly 40 years ago with practical effects.

The characters are poor and cover all the usual generic ground in a disaster film, with one having a backstory that's unveiled for plot exposition, one who just so happens to have a skill that comes in handy for the finale, one with a broken family and a couple who add nothing other than to get eaten or make you wish they would get eaten (here's looking at you, Tara Reid).

Tug of war!

The plot is typically full of holes and more ridiculous moments than you can count (would cops still chase cars for speeding with such a disaster happening?), but the best/worst is saved for last, as the film does something so unbelievable, you're left wondering what drugs the director was on.

It's really surprising that this has 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, pitting it above some of the years better films. Should we really be praising this film for achieving the complete opposite of what it wanted to accomplish? It fails on so many levels, but Sharknado really is a film you need to see once.