Age of Dinosaurs (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: The Asylum

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: Using breakthrough flesh-regeneration technology, a biotech firm creates a collection of living dinosaurs. But when the creatures escape and terrorize Los Angeles, a retired firefighter must rescue his teenage daughter from the chaos brought on by this new Age of Dinosaurs.

Review: Age of Dinosaurs is the movie that Dinosaur Week here on the B-Movie Shelf has been leading up to. Since I had already covered all of my personal collection of some of the more classic dinosaur B-Movies in the past, such as The Carnosaur Trilogy, Raptor, The Eden Forumla, and a previous Asylum dino movie 100 Million B.C, I opted to do all recent ones such as Area 407, The Dinosaur Project, Jurassic Attack, and now Asylum's newest release, Age of Dinosaurs. It's no secret that I've gone on many rants in the last year or so about the over-abundance of killer shark movies in the B-Movie realm in the last decade, and I was hoping companies would make a move away from them and towards some other creature. I actually was thinking last year that spiders would be taking the B-Movie throne from sharks due to Camel Spiders, Arachnoquake, Spiders 3D, and Mega Spider all being announced around the same time (The last one there still hasn't been released, though I believe it's name has now been changed to Big Ass Spider). I may have been wrong though, because all these recent dinosaur movies kind of snuck up on me out of nowhere like the pack-hunting Velociraptors from Jurassic Park and it's possible that if this keeps up, the spiders and sharks can fight over the throne all they want because dinosaurs will have shot right past both of them. And I'm A-ok with that, since I love me some good dinosaur B-Movies. This particular one was directed by Joseph Lawson, the guy who directed my top favorite Asylum movie of all of last year, Nazis at the Center of the Earth, so suffice to say I was heavily anticipating Age of Dinosaurs

And ohhh boy, it did not disappoint. After having just watched this, I can't think of a better movie to end The B-Movie Shelf's Dinosaur Week off on. It's not only the best dinosaur movie of this week, it's one of the best dinosaur B-movies, period. Jumping right in, the cast was surprisingly excellent in this. Treat Williams plays a retired fireman that once the Dino rampaging starts, keeps having to find, get separated from, and then find again his teenage daughter. Now Treat Williams has certainly aged quite a bit since his Deep Rising/Substitute 2/The Phantom days, but he can still act very well and not once did he come across as 'knowing he's in a B-movie so he's going to just sleep through his lines' like so many other established actors come across as in these kinds of movies. Treat Williams was just genuinely good and enjoyable. Also just as good and enjoyable was the actress that plays his daughter, Jillian Rose Reed. I know her most from My Super Psycho Sweet 16, Part 3, and knew I was in for a treat with her here. In that movie, her character, on paper, was written to be obnoxious and annoying, yet on-screen she came across as more loveable due to Jillian Rose Reed's great acting chops. With that in mind, she did not disappoint here either, having improved even more since her time last year on that third Super Psycho Sweet 16 movie. Both of these people were ace actors in this and while any scene with one of them in it was good, every scene with both of them in it was excellent, as they played off of one another very well. Hell, even the more minor side characters were very well-acted in this one (with my personal favorite being the awesome Police Chief), and those kind of roles tend to be among an Asylum's film's weakest points as normally it feels like they just grab any average joe off the street or someone's friend or relative to play those roles, but here they were all amazingly competent, and then some.

Of course it's not really the cast you're wondering about with this, is it? A movie called Age of Dinosaurs normally has one specific talking point that everyone wants to know about the most, and that would obviously be the dinosaurs themselves. Well, we have three main species' that keep popping up over and over and are the movie's main focus when it comes to this area – we have a nest of vicious squawking Pteranodons, a pack of hungry spikey-skinned Carnotaurus', and a rather large and pissed off Ceratosaurus. I've been a fanboy of the Carnotaurus ever since Michael Crichton's The Lost World novel introduced the species to me, and I've been waiting anxiously ever since for a live-action movie to showcase them. Even the Ceratosaurus is a similar kind of dinosaur that I always enjoyed and kind of wanted to see in a movie other then it's super-brief and pointless scene in the third Jurassic Park movie, so in terms of dinosaur line-up this movie pretty much reached into my dreams and pulled out exactly what I've been wanting to see for decades. And best part is, none of these creatures got short-changed at all! During the first half of the movie, and after a very awesome opening that includes a fun Alien 3 homage, we mostly stick with the slightly-smaller, very quick and deadly Carnotaurs as they move throughout the dimly-lit corridors and various rooms of this one large building after everyone gets trapped in when it goes into lockdown during the dinosaur escape, and stalks the survivors as they either hide out or try to find an escape. Even during the second half, after the dinosaurs break loose from the building and go on a rampage through the city, we still get a handful of good scenes centered around these fellas as they chase people down the streets, or sneak into a bar to slaughter the patrons, or follow our main heroes through a clothes store and onto the roof of a building to attempt to snack down on them, these guys are never far from the camera. The best part about that second half though, is that the other species' really get to shine as well – the Pteranodons are flying off with pedestrians in their claws, or engaging in attacks with police helicopters, while the larger but colorful Ceratosaur, which didn't really have much room to move around in while trapped in the building, takes on cars, police vehicles, and swat teams while it rampages through the city. Hell, there's even one scene where it smashes through a wall and right into the interior of a shopping mall – this movie does not shy away from awesome dinosaur action beats, and all of them are pure Hits, with no Misses in sight.

At first I was questioning the movie as to why the scientists would bring back all carnivore dinosaurs instead of herbivore ones, seeing as how the entire reason they want them is for A) a new type of skin regeneration breakthrough and B) to use them for theme parks and birthday parties and all sorts of things like that, and Herbivores would make much more sense then potential killers, but then the characters actually addressed that little aspect in a line of dialog, so kudus for even addressing it as most B-movies wouldn't have even acknowledge that; Sometimes it's the little things that can go a long way to adding to your enjoyment of these. Plus, when all is said and done, if they hadn't done it the way they did, the movie wouldn't have been nearly as interesting to watch!. And yes, I realize that in my review of The Dinosaur Project I bitched quite a bit about the lack of Tyrannosaurus Rex and yet I'm not complaining about it here with this movie, but that's because it just didn't bother me at all with this one. We got other dinosaurs in its place, and ones at that, that I have been wanting to see in a dinosaur movie for so so long. All Asylum needed to throw in to make my dino dream complete would have been a Baryonyx (similar to a Spinosaurus, but without the large hulking fin on its back) and I would have been set for life. And for the record, there actually is a Tyrannosaurus Rex in Age of Dinosaurs, but it's only for a couple of very quick shots once herds upon herds of all sorts and sizes of dinosaurs break loose of their confines and break out into the city and essentially start Dinosaurmageddon, which turned out to actually be quite the visual feast on the eyes, though even a couple hours after having watched the movie I still have no idea how the Spinosaurus got on top of that skyscrapper, and especially as quickly as it did, but hey – very very minor quibble. Especially when the fun shot of it getting fired upon by the military helicopters and knocked off the roof made up for any leaps in the laws of physics that had to be made.

The special effects though is really where a movie like this can be made or broken. It doesn't help to be ambitious if you don't have the effects to back up your vision, otherwise it just comes across as hokey and lame and brings an otherwise excellent movie down. In Age of Dinosaurs, Asylum does what they normally do in such movies and use a combination of both CGI models as well as practical puppetry to bring the creatures to life. What they will normally do I find is use CGI for 98% and then use very quick close-up shots of the practical work for some of the death scenes, but neither really mesh with one another and you usually don't get more then a 2 second look at the physical puppetry. Luckily this movie breaks that trend as the two do mesh together very well, and we get much more and much longer uses of the practical effects then normal. And the best part? Both types look PHENOMENAL, way way better then I was expecting. The only really iffy questionable part for the effects were a couple shots of the Ceratorsaur running down the city streets, and even then it wasn't all of the scenes of that, just a couple of the more wonky-looking ones - you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it. Other then those couple shots though, the CGI and practical both were far better then I was expecting. Even in the later parts of the movie when Dinosaurmageddon happens and there are dozens upon dozens of CGI models running around and causing havoc and there is just all around so much happening, I was expecting the CGI effects work to take a pretty massive hit, but it really didn't, and everything stayed on-par with the way the rest of the movie had been presented. I actually officially want Asylum to pick up the Carnosaur rights from Roger Corman and do some sort of Carnosaur 4 (Night of the Carnosaurs? Or Carnosaurpocalypse, perhaps?). Their practical models here looked almost exactly like what you would expect to see in a Carnosaur movie, in terms of both design and craftsmanship. Hell, this movie itself was a more faithful Carnosaur sequel then the actual unofficial Carnosaur 4, Raptor, especially during the first half of this movie when the dinosaurs were stalking our characters through the tightly enclosed corridors and rooms of the one main building. Actually, this entire movie is pretty much EXACTLY what I said in my review of Carnosaur 3 as to how I wished that movie had played out, so I'm thrilled to FINALLY get a version of that wish here (with the added bonus of my wish dinosaurs as well!) Seriously, I said it earlier and I'll say it again, Asylum had to have found a way to reach into my dreams and pull this movie out because there is so much in here that are things I've been saying at various times that I've been wanting in a live-action dinosaur movie.

It's becoming a trend in this review to say this aspect or that aspect is surprisingly excellent or above and beyond what you would expect, but when it's the truth then you can't really help it, and that trend is something I'm happy to repeat for the musical score as well. Chris Ridenhour has been Asylum's go-to composer for years, and more often then not his musical scores tend to be a very positive talking point in my reviews as he almost always turns in top-notch work. Another regular in the B-Movie genre for composing is Andrew Morgan Smith, and to say that together they both bring their A-game to this movie couldn't possibly be more true - both action scenes and slower character moments had excellent music that was faithful to the tone of the scene, adding to the experience as opposed to taking you out of it like many of these kinds of movies do. I'm also not ashamed to say that some of the slower music, especially near the beginning when Treat Williams was trying to connect to his daughter, was actually genuinely touching. In addition to that, they also threw in some fun Jurassic Park and King Kong inspired beats throughout as well, which was mucho appreciated by this Jurassic Park fanboy right here.

In fact, this movie was filled to the brim with tons of Jurassic Park-related easter eggs, some of which the casual fan might pick up on like some very similar lines of dialog or familiar-framed scenes and locations to name a couple aspects of the movie to look for, while other easter eggs only the die-hard Jurassic Park fans will notice, such as the name Dodgson written on a label (a character that was only in the first Jurassic Park movie for one scene but was a main villain in the book series) and a date appearing in the same scene, which is actually the date that the first Jurassic Park movie originally premiered - just little fun nods like that are sprinkled throughout. There's also another scene that I'm not 100% sure is a nod to the Jurassic Park franchise, but considering all the other easter eggs here, I'm certainly leaning more toward the fact that it is. See, the original climax for Jurassic Park 3 had the escaped pack of Pteranodons attacking the helicopter with our heroes in it as they tried to leave the island, but for whatever stupid reason they ended up scrapping that scene from the movie and we never got to see it (or any climax really, but whatever...), which is a shame as I've read a draft of the script with it in, and it sounded like it would have been a really awesome scene. Well here in this movie, we do indeed get a climax of our heroes attempting to leave in a helicopter, only to get attacked by one of the Pteranodons. Over all the scene was quite nice, albeit it short, but I couldn't help but wonder if they threw that in there to please Jurassic Park fans, such as I, that was disappointed in Jurassic Park 3 cutting out it's similar scene. Going by all the other easter eggs here, it's pretty obvious that the crew in charge of making this movie are large Jurassic Park fans, so I'd say it's a safe bet that that is indeed the case with that scene, in which I'd be most pleased as it is yet ANOTHER thing from my dream dinosaur movie that I finally got to see realized here.

Any downsides to this one, other then a couple wonky CGI shots of the Ceratorsaur running down the city streets? Not really, but I do have one minor nit-pick, though it's certainly not anything major or deal-breaking. I was slightly confused by the end, as it seemed that it didn't really wrap a whole lot up. I mean, unless I missed something, there are still herds upon herds of various dinosaurs running loose out there, as the last we see of inside the city the dinosaurs are still all running amok, and then we leave the city for the remainder of the movie for that Pteranodon vs the Helicopter climax, and those shots are the last we ever see or hear about those other dinosaurs, with no conclusion or wrap-up of the fact that there are hundreds of dinosaurs running loose in the world now. Unless the entire point of the ending is that dinosaurs now roam the earth again, but if that's the case then it could have been made a bit more clear; the final shot is of Treat Williams and Jillian Rose Reed standing on a cliff and looking over the city, and they could have used that opportunity to show some CGI smoke plumes rising up from multiple points within the city, with a chorus of various dinosaur roarings or something similar to confirm that yes, the ending of the movie implies that dinosaurs now roam the Earth again and have overtaken the city. But as it stands, in my eyes, that aspect seems to be not quite wrapped-up very well. Like I said though, that's only a teeny tiny nitpick that comes at the very very end, and is in no way a deal breaker, especially when the movie contains so much other greatness within it

Joseph Lawson, Chris Ridenhour, Andrew Morgan Smith, the guys in charge of the awesome sound effects, the editors, the guy who wrote the script for this, Treat Williams, Jillian Rose Reed, all the other side characters – everyone involved in this movie really outdid themselves and pretty much deserve a standing ovation. Age of Dinosaurs raised the Asylum bar just that much higher for all of their future movies now that I know what they're truly capable of.  And it's probably no coincidence that, just like with Nazis at the Center of the Earth, it always seems to be a Joseph Lawson-directed Asylum movie that is always raising the bar for future Asylum movies, hahaha. Actually, out of all Asylum movies that should get sequels, this is the one that I really want another entry of, especially if the point of the ending was that the world now has a large population of dinosaurs back in it. That could make for a pretty awesome semi-post-apocalyptic dinosaur movie and sequel. Hell, such a direction wouldn't even require returning actors or characters since I know Asylum tends to shy away from sequels. They could pretty much just pass it off as an almost-stand alone movie. All I ask is that they get the same crew back that made this one!

Age of Dinosaurs is not only my favorite Asylum film to date, but it's also one of my favorite dinosaur B-movies, period. And if you're looking for a good, entertaining, mindless popcorn dinosaur B-movie, you can do no wrong with this one. More movies of this caliber please, Asylum! And more dinosaur movies!

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Jurassic Attack/Rise of the Dinosaurs (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Little Dragon Productions

Runtime: 83 mins

Format: Imported DVD

Plot: While returning from a military mission, a helicopter crash lands a commando unit in a dense, remote tropical jungle - a lost world populated by dinosaurs. Now they must find a way out of this isolated valley before becoming prey for the prehistoric predators.

Review: Continuing on with my week of dinosaur movie reviews, leading up to the release of Asylum's Age of the Dinosaurs, starting with Area 407 and followed by The Dinosaur Project, we now hit the recently-released Jurassic Attack, also known now as Rise of the Dinosaurs (see below). However, by recently-released I mean everywhere in the world except America. That's right, this movie came out back in February pretty much all over the world, except for us here in Canada and the U.S.. For whatever reason we still don't have it on our shelves at all. At this point, the closest we're going to get in the near future is a showing of it on the SyFy Channel (This weekend on May 11th, the very last Saturday Night Original Movie before SyFy's totally idiotic change in moving Original Movies from Saturdays to flippin' Thursdays), and it will be under the changed name of Rise of the Dinosaurs. Why on God's green earth SyFy changed the awesome Jurassic Attack to the boring and bland Rise of the Dinosaurs I'll never know. SyFy has a penchant in recent years for renaming excellently-titled movies to horribly bland titles, and I guess this is just another victim of that. When we do manage to eventually get it on a home video format (If at all – I've been waiting a year now for Arachnoquake and still no word yet of that one hitting over here either), hopefully it'll be under the original title and not SyFy's terrible one.

Title-drama aside, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this ride. Not without some large clunker points, that's for sure, but overall I enjoyed more then I didn't about this one. Right off the bat we have a pretty good B-Movie cast line-up – We have Gary Stretch, who I've been a rather large fan of since Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Corin Nemec from quite a few of these kinds of movies but most recently Dragon Wasps, and Vernon Wells who has been in countless things but I personally know (and enjoy) him most from Power Rangers Time Force where he played the main big bad boss villain Ransik. Upon hearing that these three would be in the movie together, I was really looking forward to them interacting with one another, especially Gary Stretch and Corin Nemec since those two generally tend to play the same kind of character and it would have been really fun to see them butting heads. Unfortunately, I didn't really get that. I did get butting of heads, and it was indeed between two of these actors, but not the two I was looking forward to. Corin Nemec plays some kind of military general that stays back in home base and barks orders over the radio to his team, led by Gary Stretch, while they are out in the field. Vernon Wells plays some kind of higher-up from him and those two butt heads the entire way as Vernon Wells' character just wants to bomb the entire location of jungle where our main team was last seen before all communications went down (to prevent the main villain from escaping with plans for a deadly WMD), but Corin Nemec is the one that keeps delaying and biding more time because he trusts his team will come through on top. Actually, with him staying at home base, he's never even in a scene with Gary Stretch, much less as any interactions with him, so that was pretty disappointing. Corin Nemec is known mostly for being in these kinds of movies, so I'm not sure why they regulated him to the kind of cameo role that's usually offered to actual famous well-established actors just to get their name on the posters.

Those three are also really the only good actors in the bunch, and sadly two of them have nothing to do by stand around in a small dimly-lit room and bark back at one another, but at least Gary Stretch is out in the thick of the action, and he rocks it every step of the way (hell, there's one scene where the dude stands his ground with his assault rifle and brings down a charging Tyrannosaurus pretty much all on his own without even flinching). Sadly, everyone else here is pretty bad in the acting department, but some of them have other attributes to at least even things out a bit. For instance, both of the female characters are pretty hot so while their acting may not be the greatest, at least they're really good eye candy (and it really is not long until the soldier one takes off her military jacket and goes the rest of the movie in a tank top), another of the characters is someone that has been trapped in this lost world for years so he's gone a tad bit looney and while he's playing his more crazier moments he does so in at least an entertaining way and those moments are some of the highlight moments of the movie. Most everyone else is just cannon fodder characters for the dinosaurs anyway, and don't have a whole lot of lines so their acting can be excused. 

The one that I found the worst though, with really no redeemable qualities, was the main bad guy – he was bad to the point of being eye-rollingly annoying and the one true weak point of the movie, in terms of the actors. It also doesn't help that, as I've mentioned in many previous reviews, I hate having a human villain in a killer animal movie as I feel it takes time, and the threat, away from what people are actually watching the movie for – the killer animals in question, but some times I can forgive it if the actor is at least fun to watch or the role is somewhat important, but neither is the case here. He plays a terrorist warlord from some South American country or another that has kidnapped the world's hottest bio-chemist (seriously, I am totally in the wrong career field if that's what the average bio-chemist looks like), and a military team is sent into the jungle to rescue her, with Plan B being capturing this warlord, which they do both of, and even after their escape helicopter is shot down by this guy's men and they crash in the thick of the lost world this movie takes place in, the warlord guy doesn't really do much but stay in their custody, following them around, and uttering threats and laughing at them. That's about it. He wasn't needed, IMO, and they could have easily still had the movie happen exactly as it does, without him. Have him get killed in the opening firefight in the jungle, but a couple of his troops still survive (as they do in the movie as-is) and shoot down the heroes' evacuating helicopter (as they still do) and the rest plays out exactly as it does, just without that character and laughably-bad actor. 

I really do not understand the need that so many of the makers of these movies feel to put in human villains. Trust me, people are not watching a movie called Jurassic Attack to see American soldiers chasing after a terrorist warlord, no, they're watching a movie called Jurassic Attack for one reason – American soldiers going up against rampaging hungry dinosaurs. This whole human villain sub-plot just takes time away from that and was totally not needed, especially with an actor as bad as that one in the role.

In a lesser movie, even more time would have been spent with the human villain at the center of attention then we already have here, and hardly any time would be spent with the main creatures of the movie (such as with Dragon Wasps – don't even get me started on that one). Luckily, we still have plenty of dinosaur action in this one, and it's all pretty fun and entertaining scenes. We have quite a few Raptor attacks, both by singular creatures as well as entire packs of them, we have two or three Tyrannosaur attacks and chase scenes, and we even have someone getting impaled on the horns of a charging Triceratops, and all of that is on top of some nice calm scenes of herbivore dinosaurs just grazing or sleeping around as well – if you like dinosaur action, this movie has tons of it, and it's all paced within the rest of the movie very well. Actually, watching this movie shortly after The Dinosaur Project almost makes up for that movie not having any T. Rexes, since this movie has not only a Rex, but a full pack of them that roam an area that's dubbed 'Death Valley'. There were such a wide variety of chase scenes and man vs dino action moments in this, it really did remind me of old B-Movie type stories I used to write as a kid, among which were some killer dinosaur ones that were very similar to this, and there were quite a few moments in Jurassic Attack that really did bring me back to my own stories and it just put a gigantic smile on my face, especially in regards to some of the Raptor attacks.

What did not put a smile on my face however, were many of the effects. The CGI models themselves of the dinosaurs were actually very well designed and rendered and some of the best-looking creature CGI models I've seen in a movie like this. However, the downside to them is that they really did not work at all in-motion; they moved and walked very unnaturally and stilted, and they interacted with the physical environments and the real humans very badly, especially in the scenes where they're killing people. Along those lines, the gun shot effects were beyond terrible, when used on both people and dinosaurs alike that are being shot up. The movie overall is quite a bit of fun, but these CGI interactions were just so terrible, you can't help but instantly be brought out of all the fun like a speeding car slamming on the breaks.

At the end of the day Jurassic Attack, aka Rise of the Dinosaurs, may be very far from perfect, what with the annoying human villain, mostly-terrible acting, and really badly-integrated CGI effects, but good lord it's still a hell of a lot of fun for those who just wanna see a mindless army soldiers vs dinosaurs in a lost jungle popcorn B-movie, of which this movie has PLENTY of entertaining scenes of, many of which remind me quite fondly of my own similar stories from my childhood. Did they make sense? Hell no, but they were filled with tons of fun mindless dinosaur carnage scenes, and this one follows suit perfectly. You want to see people get ripped apart from a pack of Raptors? This has it. You want to see someone get impaled on the horns of an angry Triceratops? This one has it. You want to see a Rex get its head blown off by an RPG? Yeah, this has that too.

Also surprisingly, the movie does not end with the 'lost world' being blown to smithereens like you so often see in these movies, which means there's good sequel potential there if they ever decide to go that route, which personally I hope they do. Despite all its faults, I still had a field day with this, and I hope I get to one day have a field day with Jurassic Attack 2 if the creators so deem it.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

The Dinosaur Project (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Moonlighting Films

Runtime: 83 mins

Format: Imported DVD

Plot: A team of explorers go searching in the Congo jungle for proof of the mythical legend Mokele-Mbembe. When their helicopter is brought down in an undiscovered part of the jungle by a flock of strange enormous birds, they discover prehistoric creatures that civilization thought was extinct for millions of years.

Review: I know it's not a popular opinion, but I am totally in love with the Found Footage style of filmmaking. I also am (and always have been) totally in love with dinosaurs, so this should be a winning combination for me, but previous experience with this combination has left me a tad cautious here. See, The Dinosaur Project is actually the second movie of 2012 to combine the two together, with the first being Area 407, and that movie turned out to be a pretty large disappointment and mostly utter crap. With that fresh on my mind after having just watched it a few days before this, I approached this movie at a pretty weary pace.

To start, the whole Mokele-Mbembe myth of the Congo jungle is one of my favorites in the cryptozoological realm, so I was pretty happy when The Dinosaur Project started and one of the first things it talks about is that whole myth and it was great to see it get further explored as the movie went on and was, in fact, the backdrop for this movie. Even though I was cautious about it, this movie knew how to grip me from the get-go; Ever since found footage movies started being popular, I've been saying that I wanted a found footage movie to tackle a Mokele-Mbembe expedition, and by scott here we finally have one! Of course it quickly expands upon the myth, for where-in the classic legend is only about a single dinosaur (or type of dinosaur) and for the sake of the movie they've broadened that into an entire Lost World filled with many dinosaur species', both herbivores and carnivores, but I ended up being fine with that. Also surprisingly, and unlike most found footage flicks (especially the dreadful Area 407), you actually get really good solid looks at these creatures as well – sure, there's a few quick-cut/hard-to-notice shots, but only at first and it doesn't take long before we start seeing the dinosaurs in their full-on glory, which of course probably wouldn't have worked out quite so well if it wasn't for the fact that, despite this being a low budget affair, the creature CGI effects actually looked really damn good and loads better then I was expecting.

Something else this movie has going for it is that it's filled with a great sense of adventure, from the plane ride over the Congo when they first start to catch glimpses of mysterious creatures, to their physical trek through the thick jungle and murky rivers after they crash as they try to journey their way back to civilization, to their discovery of creepily-abandoned Native villages, to the fun wonderment as they discover a pack of small playful dinosaurs that they play around with for a bit, to the wide range of thrilling action scenes as they get chased by one vicious dinosaur or another – those that love adventure flicks will find plenty to enjoy here. And fear not about getting motion sickness or headaches from the camera, because even though this is a found footage movie, the camera holders (most of the time) are meant to be a professional camera crew, so for the most part the cameras are held with a very steady hand and there's not a whole lot of frequent quick panicky moving and bobbing around of the equipment.

What the movie does lack however, are strong likable characters. Nobody in the movie is really all that likable – The stern father that ignores his son and puts his TV show first, the whiny bratty son that does everything he can to ignore anything he's told and then complains about it, the argumentative fame-seeking producer of the show, the pushy superstitious guide that is leading them into the Congo – all of them are quite bland and/or annoying and just not fun to watch at all. The couple characters that did seem to have a personality about them and actually seemed like they might be ok to stick around with for the duration of the movie were of course the first couple of characters to get killed off early-on.

Another thing that kind of bothered me was the decision to not include a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the movie. I mean, I know not every dinosaur movie needs to have a Rex in it, but they're so incredibly common in them, what with being the King of the Dinosaurs and all, that their presence is indeed missed here. I'd be interested in hearing why the director decided to go that route, especially since he did include another large Rex-like species in the movie, which makes the absence of a Rex all the more puzzling. I mean, if you're going to throw in a large predator of that size, why not just go with the classic and beloved King? It also annoyed me a bit that not only did they not include the T. Rex, but after everything the characters (and us, the viewers) go through in the movie, it all results in a simple and mostly-dinosaurless man vs man climax, turning one of the characters (predictably enough) into a villain. I'm always ranting about how much I hate human villains in a killer maneating animal movie because I feel it takes the threat and impact away from the title creatures, and that could not be more true then with this movie. All the build-up during the movie of one dinosaur attack scene after another and it all builds to a simple, and quite-frankly overlong, confrontation between two humans.

Sure, the movie may only have a small few complaints from me, but those few complaints are things that bother me quite a bit and certainly amount to a bit of a lower score then I was planning on giving upon initially watching things unfold. However, there's still quite a lot to enjoy here as well and in the end this came out as quite the fun adventure of a found footage flick, and for those looking for some thrilling dinosaur chase scenes in the jungle, this one has that in spades. If you crossed the TV show Destination Truth with Jurassic Park (but removed the likability of Josh Gates), this would pretty much be the end result.

It's also miles and miles ahead of the craptastic Area 407, so if there's only one Found Footage Dinosaur movie you check out, make sure it's this one.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Death Race 2 (2010)

REVIEW BY: Michael Banno

Company: Moonlighting Films

Runtime: 101 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: Death Race 2 explores the origins of the first "Frankenstein" car driver, Carl "Luke" Lucas. After discovering there’s a price on his head for crimes he's committed, his only hope is to survive the dangerous new sport of Death Race against an army of hardened criminals and tricked out cars.

Review: I realize I'm doing this a bit backwards. I’ve already given my review of Death Race 3 a few months ago but I wasn’t reviewing for The B-Movie Shelf when Death Race 2 initially came out. Anyway, many of you probably by now know that Death Race is one of my favorite Paul W.S. Anderson movies (along with his Resident Evil series), so when this direct-to-video sequel came out back in January of 2011, it was only natural that I was going to pick this up as a Day 1 BluRay purchase. Now, I love action movies, whether there’s a good story to it or not - as long as I’m entertained by its action scenes and characters and whatnot, then it’s done its job as far as I’m concerned. In this regard I loved the first Death Race film, and the entire trilogy as a whole, so how does Death Race 2 stack up upon a repeat viewing?

To start, I’m not really sure what to say about the story - overall its not too bad, but it's not really anything groundbreaking or new either. After Luke Goss' character, Carl Lucas, ends up in prison, a crime lord wants him dead so he doesn’t squeal to the cops about some illegal stuff he's involved in, so he puts a bounty on his head. Said situation is made easier considering the deadly new tournament that Carl finds himself in. But, as you can likely guess, not all things go according to plan and plenty of wrenches get thrown into the bad guys' plan as the story progresses. Like I said, not the greatest or most inventive plot in the world but serviceable enough, I can assure you.

One of the things that can take your mind off a bland plot however, is good acting from the people on-screen, and said acting for this one is about as good as can be expected for a direct-to-video sequel to an mindless action movie like Death Race, if not slightly better. Personally I thought it was pretty darn good for what I was expecting, and the actors did justice to their roles. Luke Goss as Carl Lucas was a good casting call as he played his part perfectly as both a law-breaking bad ass as well as our central hero with a heart. Robin Shou from Mortal Kombat fame returns as 14-K, his role in the first Death Race movie, and as to be expected from him, he did fine with what he was given. It should also be noted here that he’s the only actor to appear in all three Death Race movies.

Of course the biggest selling point of these movies are the rip-roaring mindless edge-of-your seat vehicular slaughter and action, and I thought this movie did great justice to the series in that area. First off we get a few nice big set pieces - we have a car chase concerning bank robbers which while not the big highlight of the movie was still a pretty nice start to all the fun, then we get to the predecessor to Death Race event itself, a game titled Death Match which is an all-out fight to the death (or till submission) involving hand-held weapons in arenas that are uniquely done up with weapon caches, props, and set designs and came across to me very much like a level of the computer game Unreal Tournament. We get at least two fight scenes of this Death Match game before the minds behind it upgrade it to what the movie series is known for, and the main event comes to call: The Death Race. And that in itself is a big win for fans as we finally get to see the vehicular-created chaos that we all know and love from the Death Race franchise.

The action wouldn't be very exciting though if the special effects weren't up to par with them, which so often they're not in cheap CGI-filled B-movies, but the visual effects for a movie like this requires some nice oldschool practical effects-work that all movies (especially these B ones) seem to have forsaken this day in age, and boy is this movie so much better off for it; It has some truly amazing and very real stunts, gory blood-packet effects, full-scale pyrotechnics, and some truly impressive and crazy driving skills. Oh, and the explosions are no laughing matter either and will certainly please fans of mindless action flicks. All these things lead to some good and unique death scenes as well.

Like with my Death Race 3 review, there’s really not much more I can say other than the heat really gets turned up from the first more in this one. Death Race 2 was so well-made, it really could have gone theatrical like the first, and I’d have seen it Day 1 if it had.

Death Race 2, as far as I’m concerned, was just as good as the first Death Race directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, and was an excellent prequel and addition to the series that holds up quite well upon re-watches.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Area 407 (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long 

COMPANY: Suzanne DeLaurentiis Productions

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: Netflix

PLOT: Survivors of an airplane crash find themselves within the borders of a government testing area and pursued by mysterious predators.

REVIEW: I'll be doing a slew of dinosaur-related movie reviews over the next week in celebration of Asylum finally releasing another dinosaur movie soon. Starting with Area 407, followed in a couple days by The Dinosaur Project, followed a few days after that by Jurassic Attack (Rise of the Dinosaurs as it'll be known when it airs on the SyFy Channel later this month), and then capping it all off with next week's new Asylum release Age of the Dinosaurs.

As for my review of Area 407, well I love found-footage flicks. It seems most people hate them, but I really do love them and try to watch each new one as it comes out. All of that can also be said for dinosaur flicks as well, as I've always been a huge dinosaur fanboy for as far back as I can remember. Suffice to say that between those two loves, I was really looking forward to Area 407 (Known as Tape 407 during production), especially after the excellent, albeit small, promotional campaign.

Sadly, this movie fell way below my expectations. Most of the action and all of the deaths happen entirely off-screen. The most you ever see of the dinosaurs is exactly what you see in the trailer - I shit you not, not even 10 seconds worth. It's filled with dreadful acting and characters making choices that are beyond idiotic and things they should have known better on. I read somewhere that all the dialog is ad-libbed and improvised  on the spot, and it painfully shows as the actors are constantly bumbling over their lines and repeating information they already gave us a few minutes before but treating it like its new information, and going over the exact same arguments and conversations with one another just worded differently. It really was just painful.

On the small plus side, it actually has really good sound effects for the dinosaurs and an excellent overall creepy atmosphere throughout the entire thing, and I felt it did a great job in the first 10-15 minutes with setting up all the characters and letting us get to know them before the plane crash happens, which in itself is actually a really strong and terrifying scene - one of the only in the whole film.

In the end though, the terrible acting, ad-libbing, and character choices, in addition to most of the action actually happening off-screen and lack of dinosaur footage really does bring this one down to a point where not even the positives I mentioned can save it. The premise is ripe for mining, especially in the Found-Footage genre, and there was an ever-so-slight glimmer of potential here and there, but it just turned out to be a huge wasted opportunity come the time the credits rolled at the end.

 3/10  rooms in the Psych Ward

Spiders (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Nu Image

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: After a Soviet space station crashes into a New York City subway tunnel, a new species of dangerous venomous spiders is discovered, and soon they start mutating to gigantic proportions and wreak havoc on the city.

REVIEW: When Spiders (Spiders 3D for its limited theatrical run) was first announced and we started getting news of it here and there, I was a bit confused as to what kind of movie it was - remake, sequel, or something original? See, back in 2000 and 2001 there were a couple SyFy Channel style B-Movies also titled Spiders and Spiders II: Breeding Grounds. Like this one, they also dealt with genetically-modified mutant killer spiders brought down on something crashing from space, and they too began growing to immense size during the films. I had no idea initially if this was supposed to be a new sequel to that series (with the 3 in 3D being the number of the movie), a remake to the first, or just a brand new movie with the same unimaginative title and an almost exact same plot. Well it turns out it's that last one, and while that was slightly disappointing to me at first, in the end I completely forgot all about any other similar movies because this one was just so damn good.

As far as expectations for low budget cheesy B-Movies go, this one surpassed them in pretty much every regard. The acting is actually pretty good from everyone, no matter how minor or major the role, and when you take into account just how many Unknowns and B-Movie actors are in this, that's quite the feat - even the child actor didn't bother me at all here and came across as very natural. Also, Patrick Muldoon (here playing subway tracks manager and loving father that has to find his family amidst the spider-caused chaos in the city) has clearly discovered the Fountain of Youth as he hasn't aged a single day since his time on the original Starship Troopers, and he's equally a joy to watch here as he was in that classic.

The special effects of the mutant spiders ranged from ok to great and were always well-above average for what you would expect from such a movie. From the normal-sized little critters that plagued the subway tracks and other dimly-lit locations, to the dog-sized buggers that ran up the sides of the buildings and chased people through warehouses, to the car-sized horrors that occupied the mostly-deserted streets and back alleys, to the gigantic building-sized monstrosity that created mass chaos and destruction across the city, they all looked pretty excellent and the CGI models for them interacted with the physical world almost flawlessly. As a hated of any kind of arachnids, I can assure you that the CGI models in this movie will be giving me nightmares for weeks to come. Likewise, the set designs were excellent as well and actually looked realistic. Even though the movie was filmed in Romania or Bucharest or some place like that, I never once questioned if this was actually NYC I was seeing as it looked pretty spot-on to me. If I hadn't read in another article where this movie had been filmed, I would have never guessed that it hadn't been in New York City.

It's also a nice added bonus that the majority of the movie takes place at night or in dimly-lit shadowed areas, which is something I miss from 80's and 90's B-Movies that seems to not happen much anymore, if at all - so many B-Movies today (especially SyFy Channel ones) take place entirely during the day, and they loose such great potential for atmosphere by doing that (not to mention it helps mask any terrible CGI a bit). Even having a couple night time attack scenes go a long way, so it was a nice surprise when this one was filled with them. Hell, even the main plot of the movie (that being the spiders coming down from space and infesting New York City) happens within the first 5-10 minutes, which was another welcomed change as so many of these kinds of movies take so long to get to the point, but here it starts almost right away and wastes no time.

However, where it does waste time, is with the Government Conspiracy subplot. See, there's this rather large section of the movie devoted to the Government evacuated the city and quarantining sections of it off, threatening those that try to cross by way of on-the-spot execution. In addition to this going on, the Government is also employing very Mission: Impossible style tactics to 'get rid of' (I.E. murder) anyone with real knowledge on the reason the city is being evacuated, that being due to giant mutating alien spiders. On paper I'm sure it looked great, and even in-action it's not the idea of it that I don't like, it's just that far too much time is spent on it, and spent on characters within it that have no bearing on anything else in the movie, and I feel it kind of takes you out of the main meat of fun far more often then not. It brings down an otherwise perfect flow to the movie and that whole subplot could easily have been shortened down or cut out all together and the movie would have been better off for it.

Along those lines there's an extension of that subplot, dealing with a Government scientist and the lead military general doing tests on a captured spider that involves some revelations, that while I didn't mind nearly as much as the previously-mentioned stuff, I still could have done without. I say it all too often, but that's only because these movies do it all too often, but I really hate it when killer animal B-movies feel the need to throw in human villains, as I find it takes some of the threat away from the killer animals, plus nobody tunes into a giant mutated killer alien spider movie to watch a couple questionable humans make some bad decisions and act all tough about it. Don't get me wrong, I liked having the military involved, especially for some of those awesome and fun military vs giant spiders action scenes, but it's just having the lead General and scientist kind of being the obligatory 'evil military general' and 'mad scientist' characters that I could have done without. However, it at least it gave us a couple more main characters to focus on, and they did impact other parts of the movie as well as interacted with our main leads on occasion, so at least they have a good reason to be here, unlike the whole Government cover-up stuff that I mentioned earlier.

Those quibbles aside, this is a near-perfect B-Movie and it's a hell of a lot of fun. I just wish they would have come up with a better, more interesting title then simply 'Spiders'. Especially since there's already an almost identical movie about mutated alien spiders getting loose after escaping a falling man-made outer space object and growing to giant size, ALSO with the exact same generic title of 'Spiders' that was released back in 2000. But whatevs. Nobody probably even remembers that movie other than me anyway.

As for this one, I have no idea why it never got a wider theatrical release then it did. As far as I'm concerned, the acting, CGI effects, and even the movie as a whole is at least on-par with, if not better than, Eight Legged Freaks which did get a theatrical release back in 2002, and in my opinion, this one deserved a far better release treatment then it ultimately got.

8/10  rooms in the Psych Ward

Metal Tornado (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Capital Productions

RUNTIME: 97 mins

FORMAT: T.V.

PLOT: The Helios Project is a high tech facility tasked with storing and converting solar rays into an endless supply of renewable energy. After years of research and millions of dollars, it is now time to test the system out, which inadvertently unleashes a magnetic vortex on an unprepared world.

REVIEW: I'm not normally a big fan of the natural disaster type of B-movies. I love the scenes of destruction, but overall I find the movies are nearly identical to one another and pretty interchangeable and thus if you've seen one, you've seen them all. At its core, Metal Tornado is no different. However, it at least attempts to be a bit fresh by having the tornado be made of metal, thus making it even deadlier then a regular tornado. See, in this movie, due to a design flaw in this new potential way of gathering unlimited free energy from passing solar flares, an invisible vortex of magnetic energy is created, which of course then attracts anything metal - Hardware tools, storage shelves, propane tanks, chainsaws, even vehicles, to name just a few things we see; Anything and everything that has metal in it, all sucked in, dismantled, and taken apart in a matter of seconds, with the individual bits and pieces whipping around in a destructive roaring mass of metal, which as you can probably guess, leads to some very awesome low budget cheap CGI scenes of cheesy destruction and the very drawing point for these types of flicks. And yes, there is plenty here, all of which are pretty entertaining and fun. Hell, they even try to destroy it by firing missiles into it. Yes, you just read that correctly - they try to stop a tornado by firing missiles at it. That alone is reason enough for any B-movie lover to at least give this one a once-over.

However, the movie is constantly bogged down with too many scenes that take place entirely in the same couple of small enclosed rooms, as the main human characters sit around computers trying to figure out a way to track the tornado and put a stop to it. It also doesn't help that these are the exact same kind of characters we get in every natural disaster B-Movie, complete with the stereotypical sub-plot of single parent that works too much while also trying to raise a rebellious teenager. We do get a couple entertaining side-characters, such as a bad-to-the-bone biker chick, but they're far from enough to make the movie worth it, even if they do have a couple good scenes and some funny dialog. Even Lou Diamond Phillips, a man I normally enjoy the work of, even seemed pretty bored and 'blah' about being in this one, and doesn't really give us a reason to get excited here.

If you haven’t seen too many of these, then this is as good a one as any to start with, if not even slightly more recommended then most of the others, if for nothing more then the hilarious-cheesy premise and some of the unique destruction scenes. However if you're like me and watch multiple movies like this a month, then even though the disaster itself is unique and pretty fun, there's nothing else about this movie that sets itself out from the pack of hundreds of other nearly-identical disaster B-movies and you'll just find yourself bored as you've already seen these exact events and character subplots play out many times over before. 

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

Welcome to The B-Movie Shelf V2.0

 

As I'm finding myself with very little free time to really keep up with things, the B-Movie Shelf blog has undergone some changes. I'll no longer be covering news items, as I just don't have the free time to keep on top of it, and there are already plenty of better-ran sites out there for such things, so I would like to point you in those directions - sites like the Comitted blog, Dread Central, and the Fans of SyFy Original Movies Facebook Group are all excellent sources of B-Movie news and updates, and normally are the main places I pull my news from anyway. I will still occasionally link to news articles via my Facebook page, but the articles will not be mine, nor will they be to this blog. Just B-Movie related news in general that I find from around the net.

Instead, I'll be using this blog to focus solely on B-Movie reviews. Some may be two paragraphs long, while others come out at two pages long - however long it takes for me to get my thoughts out will be how long the review is. I won't be forcing myself to write long reviews if I just don't have a whole lot to say on the movie, but likewise I won't be forcing myself to leave things out if I feel I have a lot to say.

I'd also like to put out the call for guest reviewers. If anybody out there watches a B-Movie and feels like sending in a review for it to be posted on here, then by all means please do. You can shoot me an e-mail for that with the heading 'B-Movie Shelf Review' followed by the title of the movie, and it would be my pleasure to post it. It could even be for one I already have reviewed myself, it doesn't really matter to me - the more content, the better! And to get things kicked off, I've already got one guest reviewer who has sent in a few reviews.

Now, a quick word on the ratings: I rate B-Movies on a completely different scale then regular movies. A 10/10 for a B-movie does not mean I think it's as good as The Empire Strikes Back. A 10/10 for a B-movie means I think it's exceptional...for a B-movie. Thus the rating scale for these will be referred to as the Psych Ward Ratings, because sometimes watching these movies are enough to drive anyone insane (And you must already be, if you like them as much as I do!). As for how my ratings work: I work on a scale of 10, with 10 being the best and 1 being the worst. Everything above 5 is good, everything below 5 is bad, and 5 is when there is just as much stuff that I liked as I disliked. All I ask if you send in your own guest review, is that you abide by this rating system, so as to keep everything on the same scale and make it less confusing for random readers then if everyone had their own separate systems.

You can always do a search on the right-hand side over there for a keyword or movie title to see if I have a review for it already, or go look over my full complete list with links for every single B-Movie Shelf review.

- Jeffrey

Death Race 3: Inferno (2013)

REVIEW BY: Michael Banno

COMPANY: Moonlighting Films

RUNTIME: 105 mins

FORMAT: Netflix

PLOT: Convicted cop-killer Carl Lucas, aka Frankenstein, is a superstar driver in the brutal prison yard demolition derby known as Death Race, and is only one victory away from winning freedom for himself and his pit crew when the Powers That Be decide to change up the rules, as well as the race location.

REVIEW: Death Race: Inferno marks only my second review here, so a lot of you don’t know who I am. My name is Michael Banno and I'm a close friend of Jeffrey Long, the owner of The B-Movie Shelf blog. Many of you have probably read my review for Age of the Hobbits, AKA Clash of the Empires, so we’re not complete strangers. But considering that you do not know me personally, let me make one thing clear: I am a very big fan of the Death Race movies. I went to the theaters to see the first movie opening weekend, and bought the second movie as soon as it was released on BluRay. I know exactly what they are - They are big-budget B-movie action hits. So it is no surprise that when Death Race: Inferno was announced, I squealed like a schoolgirl. Sadly, money is an issue for me right now so I was not able to buy the movie upon release, however thanks to my recent acquisition of a Netflix account, I discovered that Death Race 3 was available on there. So naturally, it became my movie to watch for today and I decided to type this review up since Jeffrey hadn't yet covered it on here.

It begins with the takeover of the company that started Death Race. It then goes on to tell you about the story leading up to the beginning of the movie, and the events that have transpired since the ending of Part 2. Frankenstein ( Luke Goss) has made quite a name for himself; He is now quite a celebrity, having won four Death Races. But it looks like something is in the works as the new owner of Death Race wants to franchise it out to the world, and he wants to start it off with a bang. Now Frankenstein and his pit crew are being shipped off to an African prison where they must do battle with one old enemy and a group of new enemies. It’s a new race, and a new set of dangers as Frankenstein tries to keep himself and his crew alive to see the finish line.

Paul W.S. Anderson has, in my opinion, made a good name for himself when it comes to making some movies that I like. He made the first Mortal Kombat, the Resident Evil franchise, and is responsible for the Death Race franchise (he directed the first and has produced the second and third). In my opinion, that is a very good track record, as I love the majority of all those movies. So how does Death Race 3 hold up?

First up comes the story. I personally thought that the story was as straightforward as you can get - Someone buys out the company that was responsible for the franchise out Death Race, and makes a big deal out of Frankenstein. But Frankenstein has other plans and thus cue endless mayhem until finish, where a nice little twist comes into play. Technically we should know how certain things come to be due to the fact that this and the previous movie are prequels to the first, but I still felt little surprised when everything was revealed at the end. For such a simple and straight-forward movie, I felt the surprises throughout (especially at the end) were very well done and unexpected.

The action was quite well-shot and very entertaining, and there was not a single moment throughout the long runtime where I was bored. You have vehicular roadrage action, yet hand to hand combat, and even some good old-fashioned gunplay from time to time. The car violence may seem a little familiar when watching all three movies within quick succession, as it doesn't really do much in that area that we haven't already seen in the other three movies, but as long as I was entertained, which I very much was, then that’s the main thing for me.

The acting I thought was actually pretty good. Seeing as how this is a direct to video movie, I wasn't expecting like an Oscar winner here, but I was still pleasantly surprised with what we did get. I know that may seem like a cliché statement to make during a review for a movie like Death Race 3, but let’s face it: It’s true. Everyone seems to be really into their roles and having a blast on-set. I personally liked seeing Robin Shou back, as he is a regular in the franchise by this point and I've been a fan of him ever since his Mortal Kombat days. Also, the amazingly beautiful girls like Tanit Phoenix was a huge plus - there was definitely some good eye candy on display here.

I would probably talk about the visual effects a bit more right around here, but I don’t think there was much in a film like this except for maybe some pyrotechnics and the amazing car stunts. And for what it’s worth, I thought those were really well done, and you definitely saw some very big explosions throughout the film. Whether it was flipping cars or falling off cliffs, the stunt actors here had their work cut out for them, and luckily it all came across great on-screen.

In the end, I must say that it was well worth the wait and should be a very pleasing entry in the series for the fans. Leading up to it, I wasn’t quite sure what they were going to give us, but what we ultimately got exceeded my expectations, and brings everything full circle, making this quite the fun little trilogy. Death Race: Inferno deserves its place in the rebooted Death Race franchise, and hopefully eventually in my BluRay collection.

10/10  rooms in the Psych Ward

Shark Week (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: Itunes

PLOT: A group of complete strangers find themselves isolated by a wealthy madman on his island compound. They are forced into a horrifying gauntlet where they must survive a barrage of ever-deadlier species of shark.

REVIEW: Even though I've gone on multiple triads over the last year about how sick I am of shark movies, there's still been some really good ones that came out this year (2-Headed Shark Attack and Jersey Shore Shark Attack being chief among them). It was because of that, that I actually wasn't as hesitant about checking out and writing a review of Asylum's Shark Week as I perhaps may have been if it had come out earlier in the year. Sadly, I probably would have been more on the money had I stuck to my guns. While it's certainly not the worst movie I've seen this year, it doesn't even come close to the greatness of those other two 2012 shark movies I mentioned.

Shark Week is kind of a mix of the semi-recent theatrical Shark Night 3D and any number of the Saw movies or Saw-style ripoff movies. In this, the leader of a drug cartel and his wife (played by the always-entertaining Yancy Butler) kidnap a group of people that he has a personal vendetta against, that all played a part in the death of his son, and as revenge he brings them to his secret island which is rigged with multiple extensive and deadly shark-related traps, of which they have to survive, one after the other, for 7 days in order to escape. Well, the plot for the movie said 7 days, but if that was the case, than the movie has a really piss-poor way of showing the passage of time, as apart from a couple of the attacks most of them seemed to take place in the same day and I kind of just assumed that they did while I was watching. It's supposed to take place over 7 days, but the impression I got while watching was that it was more like two or three days, at most.

In the acting department, the main cast of victims were competently-acted but nothing outstanding; It was about on-par for what you would expect from a 2012 Asylum movie. Of course there are eight of them, so some do a bit better/worse then others, but overall it was pretty even. What did surprise me though, was the characterization each of them got. Despite being such a large group, none of them blended into the background at all and each one stood out for their own reasons and were unique from one another. Even 2-Headed Shark Attack, which I loved couldn't even pull that off at all and it was my chief complaint about it. But back to the acting itself; While the main heroes of the movie were ok, the main drug cartel leader was pretty terrible and cringe-worthy (and honestly, the actor appeared drunk during most of his scenes), and sadly Yancy Butler was below par for what I've come to expect from her after her stints in Rage of the Yeti and the Lake Placid sequels. She seemed just plain bored with her role here and not really showing any emotion or anything other then monotone. She was a pretty big waste here, and I'd rather see her better utilized if Asylum decides to use her again in another of their movies. They need to check out the above mentioned Rage of the Yeti or especially the latest two Lake Placid sequels to see just how much fun she can be, if used properly.

The special effects however, especially when it comes to the sharks themselves, are the big surprise here - they actually looked really well-done, with the sharks looking like actual real sharks most of the time and not like badly-integrated CGI sharks like in most of Asylum's killer shark movies, so kudos has to go to their effects team for that. It was also great to see such a diverse range of the types of shark, as opposed to just the one species. Along those lines, I also have to give them props for including a scene with Hammerhead sharks - they've always been my favorite, but very rarely get any movie love (Great Whites and Tiger Sharks seem to have the market covered), so it was great to get some Hammerhead action. Unfortunately, while the sharks themselves are amazing, their attack scenes leave a lot to be desired. They're filled with  a lot of really annoying quick-cutting when someone is being killed by a shark, so the death scenes are pretty redundant and uninteresting due to that, and I'm not sure if that's an issue with the Effects team or with the Editor of the movie, but either way it was a pretty bad call, IMO, as death scenes are sometimes all these movies really have going for them, and in one with the effects as good as this it baffles my mind as to why they would fumble the ball with that.

Also getting in the way of really enjoying it as much as I would have liked, are some really puzzling script-related decisions. For example, in one scene they survive a school of baby sharks and their prize is a key. They move onto the next portion of the 'game' where they get to sleep on dry land for the night. They then (for unknown reasons that make no sense) wait until the next day and after they've already traveled a distance, before A) checking to make sure no one was badly hurt from the attack the night before and B) checking to see if the key they received unlocked their chains and handcuffs that they were bound by (spoiler, but not really - it does). Why the heck wouldn't they do those things the night before, the first chance they got? Why wait so long? There's also a scene with the characters running through a minefield and all these mines are exploding, yet none of the characters are anywhere even near the ones that are going off. Actually, now that I think about it, the whole mine field part doesn't make any sense as-is, since the movie's villain takes great joy in watching them go through the shark traps in a twisted game-kind of way, so why out of the blue try to kill off everyone at once in a mine field? The movie is filled with pretty ridiculous script choices like that, that left me trying to figure out 'Why' more-often then actually paying attention to the movie, and thus constantly taking me out.

But back to the positives for a bit to end this off on - it was a very beautiful movie to look at. I'm not sure what kind of camera they used to shoot it, but it looked great, and the background scenery of the island certainly didn't hurt it either. The excellent CGI of the sharks mixed with the beautiful cinematography definitely makes this movie really nice to look at (especially in HD), if nothing else.

All in all, I'd say it's certainly nowhere near the Greats that Asylum has put out this year, but it's also certainly nowhere near their Worsts either - it's pretty smackdab in the middle, with maybe a slight lean towards the more positive side. If you're a fan of Asylum, I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it, but if the opportunity comes up that you can see it, I'd probably suggest giving it at least a one-time watch.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward