Horror Marathon: Shark Night (2011)

Welcome back to the horror marathon 2017!

If you’ve noticed, I tend to avoid the main headliner over the weekend so we’re taking a look at a random movie pick. I have some boring days that I just need buffer movies and I decided to give Shark Night a go. For one, the cast are a lot of younger actors and actress that I’ve seen over a few teen TV shows. I can’t say they are great but hey, why not, right? Usually silly shark movies are right up my alley and I tend to be incredibly forgiving of them or I just laugh at them. Its all around a cool time.

Let’s check it out!

Shark Night (2011)

Director: David R. Ellis

Cast: Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Chris Carmack, Katharine McPhee, Joel David Moore, Donal Logue, Joshua Leonard, Chris Zylka, Sinqua Walls, Alyssa Diaz

A weekend at a lake house in the Louisiana Gulf turns into a nightmare for seven vacationers as they are subjected to shark attacks. – IMDB

I have to admit that I used to take more chances on shark movies or just you know, abnormal ones. It might be the fact that Piranha DD in particular made me hesitate on choosing more of those so pardon me when Shark Night 3D didn’t quite make it on my radar. And man, its rightly so. Shark Night does have a lot of familiar names if you are into those TV series like I am. Dustin Milligan and Chris Carmack was in 90210 (the reboot series that ended a few years ago) and Katharine McPhee won some Idol or was runner-up maybe. Sara Paxton seems more familiar and I still can’t peg where she’s from. While we have Chris Zylka who plays in a lot of series that don’t seem to last too long like The Secret Circle and he was in that dreadful Piranha 3DD that I was mentioning before. I get that movies like this one isn’t really expected to be good and overall, it really does suck, especially when Donal Logue is Harvey in Gotham now and he’s part of this horrible film that had so many dumb moments.

I’ve been known to also like dumb shark movies, you know, like Sharknado. But I think the difference I always talk about is that this movie tries really hard to be serious. The other one was meant to be bad and its perceived as bad and yet, they  make some ridiculously great moments that are pure over the top and goofy in so many ways. Shark Night tries really hard even for a college party film gone wrong. Sure, there’s the whole mystery of how did a shark (or wait, sharks) get into the lake but its really expected considering they opened with a shark kill. Shark Night does nothing different with its formula and in fact, it doesn’t even really take the time to get to know these characters other than the fact that you have the nerd and the jock and the girlfriend and the mystery girl and the slut. You know, the normal group that gets picked off one by one. Its not really like you can cheer for anyone of them in particular even you kind of already expected who would make it out.  Of course, we always meet the creepy weirdos of the town at the gas station who you know right away are the bad guys and yet, these crazy college group just trusts them after their surprise appearance after the first attack. Like I said, nothing revolutionary. I didn’t quite expect the twist they had but it wasn’t really executed in an effective way either.

To be fair, these films aren’t any pieces of art and I understand that so I don’t think its fair to expect it to be a masterpiece. My point is that even in this realm, it takes itself far too seriously and has a lot of pacing issues and there’s not really anyone you want to fight for. But its main issue is that its just boring. So boring. I predicted when everything would happen and even with a cast that has made some decent stuff here and there regardless of the big or small roles, I definitely appreciated seeing everyone of the familiar faces somewhere else. Shark Night isn’t my fave. I guess, its back to Sharknado for me. The 4th Awakens is on this year’s horror marathon to-watch list so that’s coming up. For newcomers, I never get away with horror marathons without at least one or two predator films and this year apparently lands on 2 shark films.

Have you seen Shark Night? If you saw it in 3D, did it make it a better experience?

Toronto: Ripley’s Aquarium

Following last week’s Toronto Comicon recap, on Sunday, we headed over to Ripley’s Aquarium before heading home.

Ripley’s Aquarium is in centre of downtown Toronto around the CN Tower and Union Station and that tourist area.  Its hard to imagine that an aquarium of that size would actually be there and honestly, I had no idea what to expect. These are the following areas they had: CANADIAN WATERS, RAINBOW REEF, DANGEROUS LAGOON, DISCOVERY CENTRE, PLANET JELLIES, RAY BAY.

There’s no point in separating the pictures or going into more detail than needed.  Some of the pictures didn’t turn out as good as I expected and honestly, aquarium photo shots is way above my photography skills so I promise to work on that.  These are the better shots from both the DSLR and my phone. Under the gallery, I’ll also have a little video of the Rainbow Reef and the beginning of the Dangerous Lagoon before we reached the sharks unfortunately.

Ripley’s Aquarium is pretty amazing and impressive.  We were able to catch the Ray Bay Dive Show which had the feeding and it was really fun to watch.  The shark tunnel/Dangerous Lagoon was definitely the highlight where there was a slow moving walkway that we got to stand on while it pulled you through the glass tunnel surrounded by a lot of fishes and then all sorts of sharks and rays.  It was breathtaking and something to experience because no picture could capture the beauty of it all.  It was also super nice for kids because there was parts where they could crawl into ships that had glass peeking into the shark tunnel and one that had the tunnel with sharks swimming above.  Then the difference here is that we could touch horseshoe crabs in the Discovery Centre area and then touch two different types of ray at the end of the route.

It was a ton of fun and I’m definitely going back again.

Do you like to go to aquariums? Any cool ones that you’ve visited?

Halloween Marathon: Sharknado (2013)

Next up is Sharknado! My boyfriend honestly thought it was a joke when I told him that I’m going to watch this because he hadn’t heard about it before.  Unlike him, I’d had multiple recommendations to see this and I’ve read a fair amount of reviews from all of you lovely bloggers. Suffice to say, this was tied with the highest amount of votes (separate categories of course) but it was the highest votes I had.  I’m pretty sure at least a few of you will be happy to know that it got included 🙂

I’m actually pretty excited to get out of the slashers and thrillers and head into something completely requiring zero brain power! Lets check this out! 🙂

Director: Anthony C. Ferrante

Cast: Tara Reid, Ian Ziering, John Heard, Cassandra Scerbo, Jaason Simmons, Alex Arleo, Neil H. Berkow

A massive hurricane is about to hit Los Angeles.  Champion ex-surfer and beachside bar owner Fin (Ian Ziering), along with his friend Baz (Jaason Simmons) and employee Nova (Cassandra Screbo) heads out to rescue his family: wife April (Tara Reid) and his daughter and son, despite the flooding that has brought sharks to invade land, sea and sky also.

I repeatedly use The Asylum productions for the famous Shitfest hosted at The IPC.  One of the most memorably bad one was 2 Headed Shark Attack.  Seeing as I saw that along with the even more destructively boring 100 Degrees Below Zero was not even close to anything along enjoyable, I had my doubts about Sharknado.  I mean, what could I expect? Although, I always wonder if it could get worse (which I’m sure the answer is that it could).

Sharknado is the exception to these direct to video Asylum productions.  Maybe it was because I had no expectations from it or just that I’d expected to be horrible and plus, I already knew what to expect: bad CGI, exaggerated acting, ridiculous dialogue and illogical storyline.  Still, I’m here to tell you that Sharknado is an absolutely fun treat.  Yes, it has all of those things and it does it in the most shameless way but who doesn’t like to see sharks everywhere plus, characters that make some pretty crazy decisions.

I seriously have no idea how to talk about a B-horror when its a treat. So here’s just a few pictures to show you a bit about Sharknado (and maybe a few of my personal comments) 😉

I think its the first Tara Reid movie that I’ve enjoyed so thats a plus. And as stupid as some of the dialogue was and the cast wasn’t anything special, I really liked the main dude Fin played by Ian Ziering. Plus, the girl who plays Nova isn’t bad either.  No one was really annoying so thats another plus. The daughter still has issues she likes to talk about while trying to survive this craziness but hey, when’s a better time than possibly dying any moment than to talk about how important you are to your dad, right? 😉 Not a complaint, just an observation..haha!

What makes it great is the crazy action-ish scenes like this 😉 This is just the beginning of everything and it gets way out there. Thinking of those scenes actually makes me kind of happy.  Ultimate guilty pleasure anyone? Yeah, this is definitely one of mine!

I could use so many more awesome gifs but then I’d be spoiling all the fun and we can’t have that.  Whats showing Sharknado without some airborne sharks? I totally recommend Sharknado because its just awesome brainless fun.  I finally found a movie I like from Asylum! Woohoo! 😉 Shut off your brain and enjoy this one! Its really everything you expected but completely not at the same time.  Maybe that doesn’t make sense to you but it does to me 😉

Any thoughts on Sharknado? Did you find it entertaining? Are there any other Asylum movies you would recommend?