If the 12 month cycle was The Island of Lost Souls, November would be the house of pain. Darkness's early onset and the hushed chill of dying leaves rustling around the street like packs of shuffling Bed Stuy crackheads brings a special kind of shoulder ache. The New York marathon ends, you stand at the finish line watching your wobbly friends in their reflecting mylar disposable ponchos, and your body shivers on their behalf. Going out to a bar, sitting at a long table of celebrants with pitchers and drams of Wild Turkey, none of which you can have as you're on the wagon. Daylight savings has already begun, and suddenly the couch is extra cozy, every fibre of your being says "let's not go out tonight. Or this weekend. Or ever. Goodbye." With each missed party, another nail in the social coffin. But are you trembling? No. Why? SHARKNADO.
Apparently it was all the rage in "twitterverse" of which I was ignorant and for that I am truly grateful. I saw it later, on Netflix. After work. Alone. Needed it. Didn't want no boring bits or glum nonsense. Lots of Brooklyn stress was released as the sight of L.A. being flooded with CGI sharks, snapping up spoiled Beverly Hills brats and swimming along the freeway or raining from the sky.
What else do you need to say? The bitterest, crushingest month, when family obligations rise like a prematurely buried Usher to wrest even the highest of kites back down to the beige carpets of a vacuumed earth, football on TV, turkey and boiling rutabaga condensation to come but for now darkness creeps up towards the end of lunch time and by the walk home you're snared in the trawling net of cold autumnal night.
Sure, it's glamorous. It's also depressing. Relationships crumble, jobs melt away, the windows are shuttered, the air conditioner taken hurriedly from the window like a burglar.
And then, SHARKNADO comes along, bathed in crisp CGI sunshine, a ferris wheel rolls into the side of a swanky hotel on the crest of a massive incoming wave and wipes the cares away.
Previous films from 'The Asylum' have sucked pretty bad, but this works because it has the balls to stay loose, clever, surefooted along the straight razor of deadpan between intentionally trying to be so bad it's good and straight-up self-aware camp, which is never as fun. There's been a ton of similar bad films from the new AIP, the Syfy-Asylym food chain, with pay channel youtube the new independent drive-in. The films nod vaguely towards third generation Italian ripoffs of Jaws' rip-offs, which in turn reach back through cocktopus tentacles deep up into the era of the 50s bug movie. Most of them suck. Not SHARKNADO.
Face it, we all love Shark Week for the name, those hard K's are so badass. It's like a running joke, "but I can't go, it'll cut into shark week!" It it was called Whale Week, who would care? L's are never funny. And it's not just that sharks are badass killers, it's that all these decades later and we're still afraid of the water after JAWS, but we like it. The water is still mysterious. We can project our darkest unconscious fears right into the murky dark, the ocean takes it all and hides dark secrets. It's the last great expanse of territory wherein man is not the boss. Sure fishing boats may murder countless of them for their fins to please the impotent Asian businessman. How we would love to throw all those damned shark fin harvesters into the water for a nice feeding frenzy. And hey! SHARKNADO does just that.
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THE REEF (2010) however has two problems, one is that we love Australians and hate to see them eaten, something in their accents and cheery disposition makes it hard to distance ourselves from their pain, and man they express terror and pain and forlorn misery like they're going for an Oscar rather than a November diversion. The money shots are not the attacks so much as the sight of great whites slowly materializing out of the crystal blue below the surface, like a distant rider in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. They circle and you can't tell if they see you or not, their dead eyes betray no sudden interest, they just orbit lazily, then BAM! But there's only so many times you can do that and have the same groovy effect. After awhile all you have is a lot of anxiety even if you're glad to be relatively dry.
The other problem is the sheer stupidity of the outdoorsman boat dude, why didn't this genius survivalist (similar in ways to the dude in SHARKNADO) pack any lifejackets? Why if you're sailing in a really remote area wouldn't you have some kind of radio or distress signal? Or goddamned lifejackets! Why if Australia is crawling with sharks wouldn't you have shark repellent? Life vests!! Why if you are all in the water and completely vulnerable would you swim towards the friend of yours being eaten? What are you going to do to help? Of the two shark films discussed here it's certainly 'better' - I doubt even SHARKNADO would argue that, but it's not a blast. Aside from the stark natural beauty scenery, it's a wee bit of a bummer, with wayyyyy too much acting. Do we see shark movies to get bummed out? No, SHARKNADO understands this. Your actors need to be either good enough to understand that too much screaming and hyperventilating in irrational panic can sink a shark film, but just the right amount of ballsy courage (ala the awesome Liam Neeson in THE GREY) can turn a grim situation into something like Howard Hawks.. or they just have to be bad actors, but game for a good time. The Aussies have a great advantage when it comes to monster movies as their country is lousy with great white sharks and giant crocodiles. There's a great ballsy Aussie croc film called ROGUE (2007) with the new queen of B-movie monsterdom, Rhada Mitchell, for example, that works a similar territory to THE REEF and THE GREY. REEF is just screaming. SHARKNADO, on the other hand, is made for you and me, the types who know the difference, and don't give a fuck. In November there's no such thing as too bad, only too real.