In watching bad shark movies, no one can hear you scream

The bad shark movie hall of fame is crammed to the gills with flotsam, jetsam and plain old garbage but Alien Shark stakes a strong claim to be one of the most bizarre and bewildering titles of all. It defies logic, gravity, and cinema itself in its quest to deliver… something? It really does defy description.

When two improbably bikini-clad joggers come across a glowing meteor on a very cold looking beach, it possesses them into walking into the water…and their doom. Sometime later, Aleesha (Brittany Altenbach), a soldier holidaying her friends at a beach house finds herself in a battle to save the planet. Along the way, she has to deal with a half-dog, half-shark hybrid, an alien ghost shark, a climactic battle involving a conveniently invisible shark and a homemade pipe bomb, and so many scenes of sitting around talking. So, so many.

While the narrative might be a nonsensical journey through incoherent events that leave viewers bewildered, it’s a masterpiece compared to the special effects. The CGI is laughably bad, akin to early seventies television, animated with the enthusiasm of a school play. Altenbach tries her best with the material, but the terrible script and poor direction give her little to work with. Dialogue is a goldmine of unintentional comedy, and with the frequency with which characters sit around talking makes the whole movie feel like an interminable waiting room visit.

Alien Shark’s pacing is glacial, with the endless scenes of mundane chatter punctuated by caffeine hits of sporadic alien shark attacks. The climax, though, is breathtakingly brazen. Don’t have the budget for the effects you need? Simple: make your antagonist invisible. The eventual denouement involving a cobbled together bomb is both wildly overblown and massively underwhelming. Alien Shark is a perfect storm of cinematic ineptitude. It’s so bad it’s almost endearing, like a midnight B-movie marathon that’s gone horribly wrong but is somehow hypnotically watchable, so mind-bogglingly bad that it almost comes full circle back around to being entertaining. If you’re in the mood for a film that’ll make you question the life choices and sanity of everyone involved, Alien Shark is your catch of the day. Just don’t say you weren’t warned.