Bering Sea Beast

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

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.

Somewhere on the coast of Alaska, by the gold-rich Bering Sea, feisty blonde Cassie Scerbo (as Donna Hunter) gives new deckhand Brandon Beemer (as Owen Powers) the cold shoulder. He has been hired by her silver-haired prospector father Kevin Dobson (as Glenn Hunter), for reasons later revealed. Also on board is Ms. Scerbo's muscular blond brother Jonathan Lipnicki (as Joe Hunter). He has a bigger secret than his father does. This seafaring family and their crew like to dive for gold. In the opening minutes, Mr. Lipnicki discovers the first of several victims...

Apparently, divers have disturbed a hoard of hungry "sea vampires." Professor of marine biology Jacqueline Fleming (as Megan Arthur) wants to study the creatures and dastardly Lawrence Turner (as Travis Thorne) wants to outbid Mr. Dobson for diving rights. All of this begins as an interesting science fiction, but ends up being silly and tedious. The best part of the story is an interesting brother-sister relationship written by Brook Durham and performed very well by Scerbo and Lipnicki. They threw a little something worthy into this one.

***** Beast of the Bering Sea (11/9/13) Don E. FauntLeRoy ~ Cassie Scerbo, Jonathan Lipnicki, Brandon Beemer, Kevin Dobson

A made for TV movie that fails to deliver. SyFy has basically never delivered a good sci Fi movie. This is no exception. It isn't the worst movie of all time but it is definitely lacking. The premise of sea creatures feeding by exsanguination isn't a bad one but the movie execution is. The script is horrible, down right horrible. Acting is passable. Special effects are some of the worst I've seen for a more modern movie. As typical for low budget creature features, there is absolutely no character development. Thankfully it is not a long movie. If you have not seen this movie, I recommend passing it by.

Bering Sea Beast (2013)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The Bering Sea has become so popular with "Deadliest Catch" I guess it was just a matter of time before SyFy used it for one of their monster movies. A family of fisherman team up with a scientist when they discover that the old legend of "sea vampires" are actually true and now the creatures are attacking people who work this part of the sea. BERING SEA BEAST is pretty much what you'd expect from a SyFy film as they take a name some know (Jonathan Lipnicki, the kid in JERRY MAGUIRE) and mix in a rather silly story and some of the worst special effects that you're ever going to witness. These awful effects are certainly the highlight of the film because it's clear that they either didn't have much money to come up with something better or they just wanted to make them so bad that people would talk about them and bring other viewers to the film. These effects are certainly among the dumbest you're ever going to see in a SyFy film but they did get me thinking that it would be pretty fun for a filmmaker to make a documentary about all the horrid effects these types of films have produced over the past decade. I will say that the effects are so silly and bad that they do somewhat keep you "entertained" by everything else going on. None of the performances are all that memorable but I will say that Cassie Scerbo helps keep the film moving. As for the former child star Lipnicki, it's certainly nice seeing him as he is today but his performance was pretty bad. The death scenes are all mostly forgettable but then again the bad CGI really doesn't help anything. What keeps BERING SEA BEAST from being entertaining is the fact that it takes itself way too serious. I've never understood how the filmmakers could give us such awful effects but at the same time expect us to take everything else serious.