Megalodon (2004)

I really enjoy B Movies so I decided to watch 'Megalodon' on an obscure Cable Channel, merely down to it's title, I wasn't expecting a lot & my Expectations were rock bottom as it was, I thought it might be Trashy but Watchable, like the Sci-Fi Channel productions, or something in the vein of 'Shark Attack'.... Nothing could prepare me for this virtually unwatchable pile of steaming crap.It's set on a oil rig supposedly staffed by a mere 22 people....if you thought that wasn't many....actually in this entire movie you only see SIX of them throughout (probably as the budget only covered half a dozen 'actors' at $500 a pop) The acting was actually worse than I expected, The 'Actors' here was so awful they wouldn't even make it as bit players in a Steven Segal Movie... but I Don't mind bad acting as long as it's action filled....erm... this isn't.......NOTHING HAPPENS, It's all filmed in a broom cupboard of about 8 square feet. There is No Tension & No Action - I was bored out of my mind while watching, but persevered To the end, so I could save others from this dreadful fate by writing this review.Everything in this movie is fake, from the oil rig, to the snow, to the helicopter and and even the boat at the end (which does look like the kind of boats kids push in the city lake near where I live) and also obviously the shark using the worst possible computer generated effects.I would be amazed if more than a $100k was spent on this dire & painful mess.1/2 * out of *****

I have to say to everyone here that if you are out to find a terrifying movie, this is not for you at all. This movie, i would have thought, would come under the genre of Comedy. Everything and i mean absolutely everything in this movie was very very bad quality. But all this added to the comedy side of the film. I could not help but laugh during the shark attack scenes, all they had done was take cuttings of sharks obviously attacking seals, or sharks moving through the water. The MEGALODON shark was obviously footage of a Great White, just zoomed in on. The FX were so bad they were laughable throughout the film. The acting, so atrocious that it is funny and embarrassing for you at the same time. And for some reason the voices of the characters were not always in sync with the film and most of the actors had slight Mexican accents even when they were not Mexican. The continuity of this film is atrocious.So when i say that this film is horrible, i mean it. By no means should you not view this movie, just do not watch it under the pretense that it will be scary. In fact go buy some popcorn, hire the movie out, get some friends around and get ready for non stop laughs. I honestly found this movie to be one of the funniest i have watched this year.

So far, all attempts to make the extinct Megalodon into the next big monster (a la T-Rex from "Jurassic Park" or Bruce from "Jaws") have failed miserably. Steve Alten's bestseller "Meg" was followed up by an incredibly lame sequel. "Shark Attack III: Megalodon" was horrible, despite the Tom Cruise lookalike. There was a German effort a couple of years ago and the only bad thing that didn't appear in it was David Hasselhoff.Of the efforts, "Megalodon" succeeds the most and that's stretching it. The premise, of course, follows the typical cliché of a small group of people inexplicably trapped in a confined area by a monster. It worked okay for "Deep Blue Sea" but not so much here. This time, oil rig workers and a TV crew accidentally unleash heretofore extinct fish from an underwater cavern.What made "Deep Blue Sea" so good was the superior acting of Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Thomas Jane and Stellan Skaarsgard. We don't get much good acting in this film. Female lead Leighanne Littrell's only claim to fame is being married to Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys. Her acting is strictly two-dimensional and straight-out throwaway (if her role had suddenly been erased at the last moment, no one would have noticed because her character wasn't made essential to the movie's plot).Anyway, reporter Christen Giddings (Littrell) and her dorky cameraman Jake (Fred Belford) go to the world's largest oil rig up in the Arctic (or someplace close enough to surround the rig with ice floes). There, we meet the rig owner Pete Brazier (Robin Sachs) and few of his workers (played by Mark Sheppard, Al Sapienza and Jennifer Sommerfield, to name a few). The drill head penetrates an underwater cavern at 5000 feet, unleashing prehistoric fish and, eventually, a megalodon.The only real acting is done by Sachs (best known for being Ethan Rayne on "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and for hosting "Box Office America" on PBS for the last 10 years) and Sapienza (Philly Falzone on "Prison Break" and Mikey Palmice on "The Sopranos"). For some reason, Sommerfield gets the infamous "and" tag on her name in the credits, like she's a special guest star, although her resume shows nothing but one-time guest shots on TV shows. Whatever the case, she doesn't live up to the billing. Mostly, she goes to pieces and starts crying.There is little in the way of thrills. The only real one is when the workers pull a prehistoric fish out of a suction hose and it attacks a rig worker a la "Leviathan." The creature effect of the fish is great (not CGI) and the fish really looks frightening. Alas, the worker who was attacked is sent off-screen a few minutes later for medical treatment and that storyline is lost.Other mini plots are revealed and discarded. Sachs tells rig workers about an underwater methane leak and shows a glowing red spot in the sea near the rig. After that, we never hear of the methane leak again and the glow disappears. When the cavern opens, hundreds of prehistoric fish escape and very little is said about them or what kind of havoc they might be wreaking (I could imagine the producers already prepping a sequel). The other rig workers disappear after one scene and, save for a disembodied voice, are never heard from again.Just like in "Jurassic Park," "Deep Blue Sea" and other copycats, a bad storm comes along so that the Coast Guard can't show up to save the day. The attempt to create a claustrophobic atmosphere fails glaringly.The underwater scenes are CGI and they look very believable. There is a fantastic shot of the cavern, filled with luminescent fish. But, even CGI has its limits and you'll see that when the megalodon appears and attacks.The shark attacks with all the aplomb of a bored movie star. Only one guy is eaten and that looks so fake I had no real desire to hit the rewind button. The shark attacks on the mini-subs are not convincing (indeed, the actors inside act more like they're getting ready to ride "Pirates of the Caribbean" at Disneyworld than they do reacting to being attacked by a 70-foot shark).By the way, the movie is 91 minutes long. But, the shark scenes occur in the last 30 minutes. The shark attacks actually occur in the last 20 minutes, far too late to make this movie as good as it could have been.I won't say who lives and who dies, but I will say the ending flat out sucked. A speech about environmentalism near the end comes out of nowhere.The movie was directed by Pat Corbitt. You'll also notice that his company does the digital effects. At first, you might think he's a director who happens to own a CGI company. By the end of the film, you'll realize Pitts is a man with a CGI company who thought he could direct a movie.It's not a terrible film. It's just lackluster and average, with a lot of wasted potential.

I recently picked up this thing at my local supplier (Video to Go in Lansing) hoping to get my fix with a really bad movie. In this undertaking, there was some degree of success, but not extremely so.The plot is that an oil tycoon is building a huge platform near one of the poles to exploit an oil pocket that was previously unreachable. He invited a TV reporter and her camera guy along to make a documentary about his new rig. During the drilling process, they open up an underground cavern where prehistoric fish have survived for millenia (presumably). This releases the Megalodon (the ancestor of the great white shark) and the thing proceeds to try and make the crew of the rig its lunch.The acting is OK and the plot has been recycled so many times you can predict who will live and who will die. The whole thing looks like a producer and his friends got together and decided to play around with some new CGI technology they got for Christmas. On top of this, the damn Megalodon doesn't even appear until the movie is half way over. They tried to throw some environmentalist views into this thing, but it just seemed to add to an already lack-luster film.