Aquarium of the Dead

A shocking indictment of San Diego's Emergency Services, sending two poorly equipped and possibly untrained men to a public facility in crisis.

This documentary eloquently exposes the tragic impact of underfunding our scientific and educational services. With only one trained computer support person, forced to do double duty as security guard, it's no wonder these people are trapped for 86 long minutes, harassed and attacked by horrifyingly bad CGI.

I'm only glad we were spared the sight of ravenous killer otters - along with many of the other creatures who were apparently all too frightening to commit to film.

This is the 3rd entry in the "zoombies" film trilogy, and the MCU should be rightfully embarrassed.

In each film, the zombie plague occurs, just to animals, however, still leaving humans as the prey. No, the human victims don't seem to come back as zoombies themselves, they get to stay dead.

One thing to bear in mind while watching these 3 films (because, why aren't you doing that?), is that they were made on a shoestring budget. In this one, for instance, i laughed when a couple of characters were stopped by zombified river otters, which were apparently too complicated to animate by the SFX crew, because it cuts to the characters having run away from the otters and saying something like "wow, could you believe that?". I didn't, because i saw none of it on screen. I did appreciate, in this time, that they probably got the aquarium to film in inexpensively because it was likely shot during the pandemic, so there weren't any people visiting at the time. I bet we see a few more movies like this where ingenious film makers took advantage of hiring shooting locales on the cheap.

Other than just taking it all in and appreciating the goofy wonderfulness of these movies (certainly more entertaining than "sharknado"), which gets a little nod in this film because - sharks, it's silly fun, and that's all it needs to be.

Sure. Okay. Why not.

The least that can be said is that all involved knew without question what type of movie they were making, and had no illusions otherwise. It never pretends to be anything it's not, and if we viewers don't like it we have no one but ourselves to blame for choosing to watch. Before the plot kicks up we get as much footage as possible of animals in their exhibits to pad the length; the CGI is decidedly obvious, with scant texture or detail (but honestly, I've seen worse). The dialogue is a jumble, sometimes plainly halfhearted and always throwing together as much science-y sounding terminology as possible, background information and plot development, and unblinking hokeyness of different varieties (including references to other Asylum flicks, and not just the 'Zoombie' ones). The plot is very direct and more than a little forced, but at least Marc Gottlieb was able to put together a complete, cohesive story, with a series of obstacles and bad turns that make as much sense as anything can within the bunkum slant of the feature. Had someone else produced 'Aquarium of the dead,' the writing was baseline workable (if in need of heavy revision).

Bless the cast for committing to this. Some try to play it straight and succeed more than others, with Eva Ceja standing out, and Vivica A. Fox a bit behind her. The rest of the cast is far more variable in the skills they illustrate, though given the nature of the material we can't necessarily blame the actors (at least not entirely). After all, the very notion of some sort of zombie pathogen infecting marine and aquatic life in an aquarium requires multiple layers of a very special kind of suspension of disbelief. Those instances in which we see characters fighting off or fleeing from CGI zombie animals require the actors to overact in reaction to the most preposterous nothings from the dimmest reaches of anyone's imagination, and that's on top of scenes that don't bother with action or post-production visualization at all, and the actors are just responding to events that occurred off-screen, like in the B-movies of the 40s and 50s. What actor wouldn't struggle under these circumstances? As a point of reference, consider Natalie Portman in 'Star Wars' Episodes I-III. Moreover, there are times when Glenn Miller's direction seems to have reflected rehearsals rather than true takes, as in "Yep, that's good enough, moving on."

There's at least more meaningful dialogue and eventfulness here than in some of The Asylum's other titles in which page after page after page of dialogue was substituted for use of the budget (e.g., 'Transmorphers: Mech beasts'). Still - recognizing very well who the studio is, and what they do, would it have hurt anyone to have made more of a concretely earnest effort here? Against all odds, some of the schlock the company has churned out is surprisingly fun. That the production apparently had access to an aquarium to film in was great, but there was no dressing up of the sets. The scene writing and dialogue is so lax at some points as to rely completely on Movie Magic and the trust that no one will think about the proceedings for one moment; some dialogue genuinely contradicts what we can see right in front of our eyes. For a horror picture there is a significant dearth of violence or death, and the small cast and spartan appearance of the surroundings only accentuates the artifice. Only a minimal amount of additional care would have been necessary to help this reach a slightly higher level than it does.

With all this having been said, 'Aquarium of the dead' isn't totally rotten. I've seen the bottom of the barrel, and this isn't it; as much as they may try to be, The Asylum isn't actually the worst of the worst. There was a noticeable lack of energy poured into this 2021 romp, but I nevertheless recognize what skill and intelligence did go into it. Does this mean that the flick earns a recommendation? No, it doesn't. Does it mean that one should specifically set time aside to watch? No, absolutely not. However, if you're looking for something very light, something mindless, that doesn't require or inspire active engagement - well, this is passively entertaining in some measure. There are many, many other titles one should prioritize watching, but in the right circumstances, 'Aquarium of the dead' might fit the bill.

Literally first scene and I already knew it would be bad I actually knew it would be bad because Vivica A. Fox was in it and she only does terrible movies now but anyways the camera work is absolutely terrible the editing makes it look like a school project that would be worth no more than a B- and the shots that they do take are unnecessary and they suck and the acting is beyond horrible it's genuinely laughable how bad it is and the editing oh my lord it is the worst I have seen in a WHILE I can't believe movies like this get made all of the actors should find a new career and the camera man should sell all his equipment. This review probably seems like it's from some hater who has done nothing with their life and just sits on their butt but no I am a teenage fit model who goes to an arts school so I know what good film is and this is NOT IT.

No pun intended - also do not try to make sense of it. Any of it that is. You may wonder how Vivica A Fox came to be in something like this - but she needs money too, right? Maybe too much? Though I doubt that - the CGI is bad here - on the other hand you may say it embraces its low budget and goes fully silly. If you can have that mindset you may enjoy this more than others did.

But then there is also the editing issue. One example is a scene where a character is jumping with a knife to attack one of the creatures ... just so we see her fall in a completely different position ... very weird, very akward ... very wrong? You decide ... by the way Aquarium may be the understatement of the year ...