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; you absorb their shoulder ache withdrawal and the cold in their tissue box-clad toes; the New York marathon ends on a cold Sunday evening as your wobbly friends in their reflecting mylar disposable ponchos shine against the foggy grey afternoon. 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 but you know one big slug and all that ache and misery would melt into an amber glow. Daylight savings has already begun; suddenly the couch is extra cozy nd 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" but I saw it later, on Netflix. After work. Alone. I'm not going to pretend I was in on its "trending." But I will confess I needed it. Didn't want no boring bits or glum nonsense. Lots of Brooklyn stress, the type no runner's high can allay, only feeling warm and dry while watching Los Angeles get flooded with CGI sharks, in what feels almost like real time, snapping up spoiled Beverly Hills brats and swimming along the freeway or raining from the sky with a rare-for-Syfy propulsive energy.
What else do you need to say? November. The bitterest, crushingest month demands a city fall in totem, we watch it drown in sharks the way Barleycorn huskers watch their effigies burn and 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, and football on TV, and turkey and boiling rutabaga condensation 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. Relationships crumble, jobs melt away, the windows are shuttered, the air conditioner taken hurriedly from the window... like a burglar. (imagine Henry Fonda in LADY EVE saying that last line).
The point is, SHARKNADO comes along, and a ferris wheel rolls into the side of a four story parking garage, a cathartic "Los Angeles thing"), Charlton Heston might drag that ferris wheel roll out to three hours, but this film rushes along like an incoming wave that never recedes. Sharks in the bar, sharks in the traffic jam, "it's like old faithful!" - "We're gonna need faith to get through that." A douchebag boyfriend of the ex who says "Even if it is the storm of the century, BEverly Hill's rescue services are second to none!" before he sees a shark in the swimming pool and then a wave crashes through and his heads bit off. If you played the game where you had to be halfway up the stairs to avoid getting eaten by a shark since the water level is rising in your kid-magination, then yes! Yes! YES! The leader of the survivors, Finn, is a typical bleeding heart L.A.-er who has to stop to help everyone, even school buses that look empty as you pass. "This is your problem, Finn!" and we kind of agree, but then Boom!
More points for trying. What a man. The real rooting interest is in his barmaid who wants to be more but he's standoffish, the loyal hardscrabble Nova (Cassie Scerbo) who spends the bulk of the movie toting a shotgun and being like "Sharks.... why did it have to be sharks" and later has her own Quint on the USS Indianapolis yarn of how she got that sexy" (but occasionally the latex flakes off) thigh scar. Sharks fly in the wind but there are no other fish nor even a shred of seaweed, and best of all, this apocalypse of sharkiness seems to follow these guys alone -- other cars continue to drive by, ignorant that the Hollywood sign is down to " Hol o d". The bloody water gets a menstrual blood reference. And the biggest disaster of all, cell phone reception is gone. Oh, LA. Would it be half as funny anywhere else? The best aspect is this "half end of the world" weirdness -- car rental agencies are still in business, cops are cordoning off areas of downtown for no particular reason. There's no reason to panic unless you've been attacked, but meanwhile half a block down they're still waiting in line at the liquor store.
There's been a ton of similar bad films from the new AIP, the Syfy-Asylum 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. Surprisingly not SHARKNADO. It's like it overheard every excited imagination of kids hanging out on the beach in 1974-78, imagining sharks attacking them even on the beach, or the highway, or flying out of the sky... and the Asylum folks said if we're going to actually try and make one of these titles halfway decent, let it be SHARKNADO. And let Tara Reid stand as a lesson against too much tanning and peroxide. Yea.
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 to your parents for the weekend, 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. We can project our darkest unconscious fears right into the murky dark, the ocean takes it all. Soaks it all up, like a combination stress pillow and life jacket around your albatross neck, November.
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Netlfix told me to watch THE REEF next, so I did. Hmmm not as fun. Maybe it's something in their accents and cheery disposition but it's hard to distance oneself from an Aussie in distress as easily as it is to laugh at a Los Angelysean. The money shots in THE REEF 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 if you're sailing in a really remote area wouldn't you have some kind of radio or distress signal? Or goddamned lifejackets! Australia is crawling with sharks, so 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?
I doubt even SHARKNADO would argue that THE REEF is a better film quality-wise. But 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 baller Aussie croc film called ROGUE (2007) with the new queen of B-movie monsterdom, Rhada Mitchell, for example, that works a similar territory and is better. Based on a true story, in the end REEF is just blue and screaming. SHARKNADO, on the other hand, is made for you and me.
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