Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 19 (Sharknado)

This is stupid.

It's another one of those entries. Yes, time again for both you and I to throw up our hands and say, succinctly, "the fuck?". The fact that a movie like this got made doesn't surprise me. Lord knows there's a million low-budget shlocky so-bad-it's-good shark movies out there. The fact that this one achieved the notorioty that it did, getting five sequels? That baffles me. You're kidding if you think I'm touching another five of these, but let's look at that Wikipedia link and see how farfetched they get. We go from a B-movie disaster picture melding Twister with Jaws to... the end of the world? A time travel plot about battling other Sharknadoes throughout history and then undoing the franchise? What in the actual fuck went on with this series? I was there when this came out. I PVRed it on Space, I watched it, and well... I still don't know. I guess a shitload of people wanted this particularly brazen over-the-top nonsense, and I can't claim myself exempt because I've seen the fucker twice now. Let's try, somehow or another, to take this in some sort of direction. If I could do it to Godzilla 1998, I can make an attempt with Sharknado. God help us, this is our analysis.


A charitable reading of the film would suggest that this trades in subversion and dark comedy. You don't think so-and-so is going to die, but WHOOPS HAHA THEY TOTALLY BIT IT. A less charitable one would say it makes no goddamned sense and has tonal whiplash left and right. The opening certainly has jack and shit to do with anything that happens, beyond giving you more sharks killing people. John Heard, creepy old man character that he's playing, probably should have lived past the 1/3rd mark. Tara Reid's new boyfriend literally exists to be a jerk for two minutes and then die. The wildest, of course, is the poor bus driver. He makes it out of a tough situation only to die in a wild bit of black comedy. There's one swerve to this logic, which we'll get to in the hero shot of the movie, but let's talk about those goddamned sharknadoes. On paper, of course, it is absolutely fucking stupid. Indeed, the movie is more about sharks than the tornadoes which accompany them. I think only one person actually dies to the suction of the tornado, compared to a shitload who fall prey to shark attacks. You'd think someone just wanted to make a tornado movie and tried to make it THE COOLEST SHIT EVER by making the tornados full of fucking sharks, but it's the other way around: the tornadoes support the sharks. There's also the matter of literally blowing up the tornadoes to dissipate them with a rush of warm air, which... That can't possibly make any real scientific sense, can it? It's technobabble that almost makes sense. I guess.


The best goddamn bit of the movie is the ending, actually, and no I am not trying to make a clever joke about how the high point was when the credits roll. The honor goes to the moment when protagonist Fin leaps into the mouth of a shark with a revved chainsaw, and cuts his way out from the inside. That is the kind of absolutely dumb shit I expect from a movie that fuses sharks and tornadoes, and it's a pity we didn't really get too much more of it. Oh, the movie's dumb and gory but it never reaches anything near as gloriously stupid as that moment. Hell, he even cuts one of the supporting characters who got eaten earlier out of the shark! And she lives! Is it contrived? God yes. Is it one final reverse act of subversion? Oh lord yes. How about that? I managed to find a weird dark mirroring in Sharknado of all things. Okay. Fuck it. We are getting out while we still can. The day I find deeper ground to tread in a fucking movie about shark tornadoes is the day I just publish this post and lay down for the rest of the night. Oh look. That's right now. See you tomorrow.