20130902: SFF review--2 Headed Shark Attack

Name: 2 headed Shark Attack (2012)
IMDb: link to 2 Headed Shark Attack page

Genres: Creature Feature, Horror   Country of Origin: USA.

Cast: Charlie O'Connell as Professor Babish, Carmen Electra as Anne Babish, Brooke Hogan as Kate, David Gallegos as Paul.

Directed by: Christopher Ray. Written by: Edward DeRuiter (story), H. Perry Horton (screenplay).

The Three Acts:

The initial tableaux:
A university sponsored excursion at sea runs into trouble when the undersized boat hits a shark head-on and kills it.  The captain, Professor Babish, dislodges the shark.  It flows back to the propellers and breaks them.  As a side benefit, the radio tower snaps off, and they act like this is a permanent problem.  That was a jump the shark moment; one knows the rest of the film will be nonsense at best.

There is a nearby atoll.  The students are ferried there while the boat gets put back together.  The first shark's death attracts the two-headed shark.

Delineation of conflicts:
The 2 headed shark is hungry, and apparently irritable.  The humans would like to stay alive, and return to their normal lives, but their lack of survival skills hampers this.

The atoll is unstable, and falls apart toward the end of the video. The death toll rises as the humans attempt to fix things in a very non-coordinated fashion.

Resolution:
This is a creature feature elimination derby, where the shark does the eliminating. Resolution here is about how many humans survive, and who they are.

One line summary: Jumps the shark times two.

Statistics: 

Cinematography: 7/10 Usually well done: sufficient light, good colour palettes, reasonable framing.

Sound: 7/10 With few exceptions, well done.

Acting: 2/10 The actors, other than the four named above, serve only as eye candy.

Screenplay: 0/10 The video was another elimination derby, rather like a reality show.  Just about everyone gets killed by the real star of the show, the two-headed shark.  Most of the lines in the film are irrelevant.  The character development was next to none, and very few of the lines are about interactions or development of motivations.

I saw this on the SyFy channel, which is noted for substituting commercials for footage in the film.  On SyFy, the film is PG.

Special Effects: 5/10  The two-headed shark was sort of interesting from a technical standpoint.  The two heads would switch off who was holding the person, and who was chewing.  Alternately, the shark would eat two people at once.

Final Rating: 1/10 Two black holes for screenplay and acting.