Bering Sea Beast

O my god, awesome. I give it a 5 for entertainment value. Now, Citizen Kane this is not, but you know what you're getting with SYFI Saturday night creature features. The monster has a certain, shall we say "garbage bag" effect going on. And, at one point, I swear I saw a wire just as it was being erased by the cgi. The acting was decent, Johnathon Lipnicki did a good job. The special effects were about what you would expect. I won't give it away, but pay attention when they have the dad in the back of the truck. You won't see that coming. If you love cheese, check this out and, hey it put my husband to sleep, so I didn't have to listen to his comments.

RELEASED TO TV IN 2013 and directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy, "Bering Sea Beast" (aka "Beast of the Bering Sea") chronicles events on the Alaskan coast when gold dredgers inadvertently unleash bloodsucking sea creatures. When their father (Kevin Dobson) falls prey to the ravenous beasts, siblings Donna (Cassandra Scerbo) and Joe (Jonathan Lipnicki) unite with a stalwart seafarer (Brandon Beemer) and a dedicated marine biologist (Jacqueline Fleming) to kill or be killed by the monsters.

This is a snappy, action-packed TV creature feature with great ocean/gold-dredging location photography. Scerbo stands out in the cast mainly because she looks great in tight pants, which is offset by her feisty, stubborn obnoxiousness. Lipnicki is duplicitous; Beemer is palpably noble; and Fleming is intelligent, celestial and compassionate. Sure, the CGI creatures are cartoony, a meshing of stingrays, vampire bats and frogs, but they're formidable opponents. Unfortunately, the first half is better than the second, which seems to fizzle out despite all the action.

THE MOVIE RUNS 86 minutes and was shot in Slidell, Louisiana (but the mountains in the background show that some of it was shot in the Great Northwest). WRITER: Brook Durham.

GRADE: B-

Have you noticed that the more terrible the movie the more the lead characters are constantly saying," Go go go, Or bring up hurry up " All at the same time. This one is so bad you can see the wires on the creatures.

Working on a potentially-loaded gold vein, a family of gold-hunters in the Arctic comes across the truth behind a local legend when they disturb the resting area of a group of vicious vampiric predators and must save the town from the ravenous creatures.

This is an incredibly fun if flawed entry amongst the Sci-Fi Channel efforts, though it actually does a lot more right than wrong. One of the biggest pluses here is the absolutely fun and exciting plot-line that allows this one to be loaded with action scenes, especially in the later half which is when the creatures get free and are able to wreck havoc in the town. With plenty of fun encounters including the ambush at sea in the dark that shows the hunters' trap is far from effective that allows the creatures to feast on them in some nice behavioral-attack scenes, an effective encounter in the warehouse that finally leads to a discovery about their weakness and the final match at sea armed with their chosen weapons in a thrilling battle against the creatures which has plenty of momentum turns, some suspenseful moments thrown into the mix and an explosive ending that makes for a fun and exciting finish, the finale gets quite a bit of enjoyable moments out of itself that's coupled nicely with some really good action scenes earlier on. As well, the creatures are given a rather inventive back-story that makes them far more than just unexplained things creeping up out of the darkness, but have a more understandable biology and behavior that most other creatures in these films are never graced with and offers a touch of sympathy when combined with the real reason for their appearance in the modern world. That said, there's still some problems here, mainly in the rather atrocious CGI here with some utterly abysmal work on the creatures that make them look like pixilated bat wings with fangs without any sort of detail to the beast completely neutered among the blurred nature of the scene, and when done in conjunction with the blood and gore makes for quite a troubling experience. As well, it features a few troubling story lines that make no sense, including the effort to include the human villain amongst their plans or the need for secrecy regarding their appearance, a common trait that serves nothing original here and really does this one little favors. Otherwise, this here was quite enjoyable enough.

Rated UR/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

A rather lame movie, but it does have bright spots and it is a long way from SyFy's worst. Most of the acting is decent, especially from Jonathan Lipnicki(such a cute child star he was) who gives an earnest performance and the attractive Cassie Scerbo. The scenery is nice too with some competent photography(with exceptions) and the ending has some exciting action. There is a lot wrong with Bering Sea Beast, the biggest problem being the special effects, atrocious is a good word. The sea vampires look more like garbage-bin-bags with teeth and bat-wings, and aside from how they look they are also without personality or menace, you actually cannot take them seriously. Their attacks are not suspenseful or tense in the slightest, more veering between unintentionally comical, and suffer from some sloppy and rushed editing. The music plays too much of a dirge in places and is very generic stuff complete with unconvincing and at times bizarre sound effects and mixing. Bering Sea Beast is very badly written, the dialogue just reeks of cheese apart from the odd moment of snappy banter, at the beginning there are some laughs but later on it is very grating, while the characters are stereotypical caricatures and nothing more. Especially the villain, who had a subplot that was clichéd and out of place, and the over-compensated way he was played was the chief exception to the "decent acting" plus-point earlier mentioned. The story ends on an exciting note but much of it was dull and far too ridiculous to be taken at face value, sense of terror, tension, fun, thrills, suspense and even logic are almost completely thrown out of the window. There is some fun scattered here and there but too much of it is tiresome and grating, overall while SyFy have done much worse Bering Sea Beast was rather lame. 3/10 Bethany Cox