Empire of the Sharks

This movie tries to combine Mad Max with Jaws and the end product is about what you expect when you see "shark" in a movie title these days. The only thing I liked was the setting, the various boats and mixes of technology made for an interesting setting. Everything else was absolutely awful. The acting was bad, even for a made for TV movie. The writing relied heavily on long over done clichés and tropes and the plot was rather uninteresting. As with all of the latest crop of this kind of film the sound design is overdone and distracting, potentially to make up for the awful writing. It makes the cheesy action scenes even harder to sit through. Overused bargain bin CG adds to the unbearable cringe that describes most of this movie. The main villain is beyond comical, the actor's performance combined with the writing makes his appearances on screen almost comical, but still somewhat painful.

In short, this movie is bad, not "so bad its good" but "Why did I waste 90 minutes of my life on this" bad.

There are some TV movies that are good, there are some that are bad. Some are that bad they are good, and some are that good they shock and amaze. 2017's "Empire of the Sharks" is an amazing masterclass of moviemaking that delights and entertains... Hang on, I've been smoking crack again. I meant to say that this is a steaming pile of crapola.

Brief Plot: In a dystopian future where the Earth is underwater a bad guy is about to meet his match.

Detailed Plot: Ian Fien is a nasty SOB that controls a small floating island as a dangerous and menacing warlord. With the majority of the world submerged under water due to events of the past, in this future version of Earth resources are sparce. With his army of trained sharks Fien and his men capture Willow, a mysterious stranger that happens to be the daughter of a "shark caller". She might just be the only person that can inspire a rebellion to overthrow the evil warlords dominion and lead whats left of humanity into a safer future.

Film stuff: EOTS is written and Directed by Mark Atkin, who has plenty of TV Movie titles under his belt, including; "6-Headed Shark Attack" (2018), "Planet of the Sharks" (2016), and "Sand Sharks" (2012). Just to be clear - I've only named the shark based films Atkin's has directed recently, but in fact he has at least 25 titles under his best as director and almost as many as writer. Atkins also worked on the camera and did the editing (along with Marq Morrison. He didn't work on the music, this is by Heather Schmidt, but I'll be honest, when you are watching this film you won't pay attention to the music with how bad the film is. CGI... CGI? Let's just skip that because it looks like everyone else skipped it too. With a runtime that's around 85 minutes, this bad film will feel like it's dragging, even with a 15 rating to spice things up a little.

Cast: John Savage plays Ian Fien, Jack Tompkins is Timor, Ashley De Lange is Willow, Jonathan Pienaar is Mason Scrim.... I could keep going, but to be honest, nobody really stands out in the film. Even those amongst the acting cast who don't give a cheesy performance are hampered by the plot that's been done and recycled many times before and the lacklustre script which could have been written as a colege project by 16 year olds. How did John Savage, who was once in "The Deerhunter" (1978) find himself in this, it must have been some downward spiral for his career.

Wrap up: This super low budget creature feature film is a straight to TV movie which is produced by The Asylum - which explains an awful lot. It's actually a sort-of sequel to "Planet of the Sharks" (2016) which I generously gave 2 out of 10 when I previously reviewed that title, so you can imagine how much I was looking forward to this film - hint, I wasn't. Shark films have been done to death and this film really doesn't do itself any justice. In an attempt to combine "Jaws" (1975), "Waterworld" (1995) and "Mad Max" (1979), "Empire of the Sharks" instead pulls its own trousers down and curls out a massive steaming turd on-screen for those unlucky enough to catch it on TV. If the first film was abysmal - this is worse than dire. Instead of wasting money making trash like this, think of the good that could have been done if the production crew had of just donated money to charity or a worthwhile cause instead. Sorry - 1 out of 10. Not even that bad that it's good for a laugh.

First of all I must say that I was lured in given the title of the movie, as I am a fan of the creature feature genre. And yes, there is just something fascinating and interesting about sharks in particular. But the title alone for the movie had B-movie screaming all over it, and when the SyFy name appeared, I must admit to a 'oh, one of those types of movies!' thought crossing my mind.

But still, I decided to sit down to watch the movie, because it is sharks after all. And who knows, SyFy have been known to make a great movie every now and then. They are rarely, but they do exist.

As for the acting in the movie, well I was familiar only with John Savage, and he is always fun to watch in movies. It was really hard to take Jonathan Pienaar serious in this movie given his body gestures and way of acting, whether it was called for in the script or it was his style, I have no idea, but it sure was annoying.

"Empire of the Sharks" falls prey to the usual SyFy level of special effects and CGI. So don't get your hopes up. The effects and visuals are there and they function well enough for their purposes, but they are not impressive eye candies to behold. And the fact that the sharks were growling menacingly as they were swimming about was just ridiculous.

There was something in the movie that was taken directly out of "Conan". It was the scene where chained people were working some kind of milling wheel. A subtle homage or just a random coincidence? Who knows...

I suppose that "Empire of the Sharks" can best be classified as "Water World" meets "Jaws".

The storyline in the movie was easy to follow and required no complex thinking from the audience; so it is essentially just to lean back and watch the movie here. However, the concept of an army of sharks controlled by someone wearing a pair of gloves was somewhat difficult to accepts as a serious idea.

For a shark movie then "Empire of the Sharks" was not overly impressive or particularly enjoyable. It is just another movies in an endless line of less than mediocre shark movies that clutter the genre.

Right from the start this starts off bad - despite being set in the ocean (sort of Waterworld meets Mad Max) it was obviously filmed on a beach, probably the same set used for the equally atrocious Planet of the Sharks. With the exception of Ashley de Lange, who plays a Carrie-like shark caller, all of the cast, along with the script writer, deserve to be thrown in the ocean & fed to the sharks. The bad acting is painful to watch. Poor CGI. And sharks do not growl!!! Very bad film.

"Empire of the Sharks" its about what you would expect from a Mark Atkins Asylum film. This sequel to "Planet of the Sharks" maintains the spirit many direct to video or TV Asylum movies have had since they started. Its cheaply made, it has some awful acting (most of the acting is bad but it has a few good performances), its absurd and the filmmaking its incompetent but part of me thinks that's intentional.

Mark Atkins got better since "Halloween Night (2006)" which was a delightfully bad "Haloween" rip off, while its is better than that, its still not good in any way, shape or form.

You really need to be in the right mood when you watch an Asylum film, just relax and try to enjoy the movie for all of its flaws, most of the time its not rewarding but maybe you can get a couple of laughs out of it, its hard to find one that actually deserves to be seen and "Empire of the Sharks" certainly isn't.