Probably as low budget as you could probably ever get without breaching some kind of law, Asylum Film Studio’s brings us another mockbuster classic asking the pertinent question, who would win in a fight, a big shark, or a big crocodile? By the end of the film, you may have lost the will to live. I certainly had.
Asylum film studios are well known for their terrible direct to DVD releases, many of which rip directly from new releases in an attempt to make some quick cash. Let us not forget the Mockbuster classics that were ‘Sunday School Musical’, ‘Transmorphers’ and ‘Snakes on a Train’ (yeah, really). Alongside these examples of flagrant disregard for copy write law, Asylum has also created (I use that word loosely) a series of monster flicks, such as Mega Piranha, and most famously Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus. Well now the Mega Shark has returned, but this time, he is facing off against a different, but luckily equally sized foe, the Crocosaurus (which, if you didn’t guess, is just a huge crocodile).
The Plot is simple, as was to be expected. It turns out that the Mega Shark, thought to be dead in the first film, is still alive (what a surprise), and quickly takes out a US Navy vessel, with Lt. Terry McCormick (Jaleel White) being the only survivor. Meanwhile in the Congo an illegal mining operation is disrupted by (you guessed it), a giant crocodile, and an English Hunter named Nigel Putnam (Gary Stretch) is sent to investigate. Putnam somehow manages to knock out the beast (which is strange seeing that for the rest of the film it is almost impervious to harm, even from missles, but anyway...) and after making some connections, has the sedated crocodile shipped out to sea for some not-really-explained reason. Things quickly go awry when the mega shark attacks the vessel holding the croc and soon both are loose around the coast of the USA. So Putnam as well as McCormick, Special Agent Hutchinson of the NOAA (which I doubt is concerned with the controlling of giant sea life threats) and Admiral Calvin (played by Robert Picardo of Star Trek fame and certainly the only recognisable face within the second rate cast) must try and stop them before they destroy civilization! From this point the trio follow the two giants from one poorly animated scene to the next, attempting to find out a way to kill them, which they eventually do, in not too satisfying circumstances.
Obviously the most disappointing aspect of Mega Shark Vs Crocosauraus is the real lack of any decent action, mostly inhibited by the fact that the CGI for both monsters as well as the objects that they interact with is so inexcusably bad that there is never any hope in creating any emotion other than laughter at the sheer stupidity of it all. At best all you can expect are some dodgy CGI explosions poorly plastered over the action, with men and women simply disappearing because there was no real attempt to animate them being eaten. The environment will fail to react the movement of the monsters, such as when water will fail to splash when the shark leaps into it or boats will fail to rock (or move at all), when colliding with the huge beasts, huge beasts which are as lazily detailed and textured as you could probably achieve. Meanwhile many scenes are seemingly reused over and over at different points of the film, much like that scene from Monty python’s The Holy Grail, but less funny. Overall, every aspect of the production of the film is poorly done, and garners little real excitement, I really had no hopes for the story, but I did hope that perhaps at least the action would be good, and maybe those at Asylum, after the partial success of Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, would have put a little more production capital into this newest instalment; I was clearly mistaken. Clearly those creating the film realised the shoddiness of their CGI work, either disguising it in almost pitch black underwater shots, or resolving to not show the beasts for more than a few seconds.
So really, all you are left with are the scenes where we aren’t face to face with the worst designed monsters of all time, where the story is being progressed or where characters are interacting. Don’t expect any less of a horror show here, the acting is incredibly poor, and the production values in these scenes remains awful. Nobody really seems to be making any effort, which is understandable, they probably didn’t get paid much.
I think I’ve said all I wanted to say about this, if you’re hoping that a poor story and terrible acting can be thrown aside for some good quality action, don’t be fooled, there is nothing good quality about any aspect of Mega Shark Vs Crocosauraus. In the end, I shouldn’t have expected much from a direct to DVD product nor from the producers at Asylum. Sadly, I’m sure they will continue to make these ridiculous monster themed B-movies, and idiots like me will probably keep buying them.
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