Movie Review: Avalanche Sharks

Sharknado set a dangerous precedent. Imitators like Avalanche Sharks will basically say: let’s take a natural disaster and animal and piece together a stupid movie on the cheap. What the imitators don’t realize is that Sharknado’s execution is more clever than it’s outward stupidity would indicate, making their movie MUCH more terrible by comparison. Truly impressive to be that much of a waste of time at 80 minutes long. That’s BAD.

What’s worse, is I actually like Avalanche Shark’s hilariously dumb setup. It’s spring break on I wanna say Mammoth mountain, but I don’t remember and it’s honestly not worth anyone’s time to remember. Anyways, it’s a ski resort on spring break. The vacationing co-eds all are trying to have a good time, but someone has displaced some Native American totems, causing inter dimensional sharks to appear and immediately thirst for blood. It’s up to the “Roy Scheider from Jaws” type (Richard Gleason), the “fat Hasselhoff” (Eric Scott Woods), “the money obsessed owner” type (Benjamin Easterday), an ex military guy (Alexander Mendeluk) and his Stockholm syndromed girlfriend (Kate Nauta, sadly NOT Brooke Hogan as was intentioned) to figure out how to stop the interdimensional shark avalanche from killing the nubile young’uns.

I was ready to have fun at this movie with “interdimensional sharks attack bikini clad ski resort.” The intro is delightfully dumb enough, with a woman riding to a ski resort in a bikini, as if the writer thought this was at a beach, but was told after filming started that the setting was a ski resort. Sharknado’s intro and premise is just as fun in a stupid way. However, the creators of Sharknado really thought about their dumb idea. Their actors may be washed up, but there was talent in Tara Reid and Ian Ziering at some point; those actors will find a way to sell the story. The plot is pretty streamlined, and not filled with copious side quests. And the “set pieces” are not just sharks killing people repeatedly. Sharknado finds that sweet spot of just dumb enough: the ideas and plot holes are there, but you’re having so much fun you don’t care.

Avalanche Sharks lacks 99% of Sharknado’s fun. It’s just S.T.U.P.I.D. In a tedious, lame way. I suppose the movie’s biggest mistake is a weak anchor. Nice try Alexander Mendeluk, but you can’t sell this material. I would have preferred Eric Scott Woods take your place (he’s the fat Hasselhoff), since he’s selling the truly horrific dialogue in ways that made me chuckle. I’m pretty sure this script was written by someone who’s second language is English. Not surprising, since the credited screenwriter is Keith Shaw aka Taj Nagaoka because…sure. Bad dialogue is one thing, but the movie is shoddily put together, even for a movie that’s supposed to be bad. It’s edited in a way that makes it really boring to sit through. Transitions take like a minute when they should be a couple seconds. There’s so many tangential characters getting murdered in little 5 minute pockets that I’m pretty sure you could make a drinking game out of “Was this person in the movie before?” So you don’t care about who’s dying, and most egregiously, the kills are all the same: the shark fin shows up, someone points, and the shark eats the person, leaving behind blood in the snow. At some point, you start to zone out because you know what’s coming. Avalanche Sharks shouldn’t LOSE it’s audience clocking in under 90 minutes; thank god for phones, which I was openly perusing by the end, prepping to write a review of this piece of garbage.

The imitator is rarely as good as the originator. Avalanche Sharks was never going to pull off what Sharknado did. But the contempt with which the creators of Avalanche Sharks have for the audience of these B movies makes them phone in what feels like basically a free ride. It’s insulting, and waste of time. Just watch Sharknado again, or a sequel. Tara Reid gets a saw hand people! And Avalanche Sharks…doesn’t even have an effing SHARK AVALANCHE!!!!

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