Shit sandwich. That’s the famous two word review from Spinal Tap for their album Shark Sandwich. I wish I could give a two word review and be over with this, but I can’t. It’s apt to describe Sky Sharks as well. We’re in an era of the “so bad it’s good” film. Sharknado and other films have combined the absurd with the implausible. This film aims to reach that level, but choices made in the script and the direction drag the film past that lauded level of bad films. This is simply put, a bad film.

From the opening scene, which aims to copy films like Ghost Ship and others that set up relatively normal life mixed with the horror and absurd, you get the tone of the film. A grandfather is watching a dinosaur movie with a naked girl while his grandson looks on, bored. You could say that it follows a similar path here, except it’s the audience bored watching a film with gratuitous nude scenes. And oh boy, are there gratuitous nude scenes.

The film, directed and written by Marc Fehse, is 102 minutes of questionable choices and goofy effects.

Normally, I’m All About Goofy Effects In Horror

Don’t get me wrong, I love absurd horror, go check out our review of Psycho Goreman to get an idea for how to properly do gorefest horror. This film not only doesn’t use practical effects, it relishes in the fact that it uses the worst possible CGI effects. The only redeeming thing are the Nazi Zombies makeup. But whenever they’re in a scene, they’re ruined by the horrible CG effects. So it’s a tradeoff that doesn’t fit into the audience’s favor.

Is there a plot in this film? Sure. There’s what looks like a plot. But it’s convoluted, and interspersed with not remotely old looking Nazi footage of the Sky Sharks. Normally films at least aim to make old style footage/flashbacks look old with film grain and other effects. In this film, the old footage looks the exact same as something happening in the present.

If you ask me who the main character is, I don’t know. If you ask me if the old guy taking youth serum is, I don’t know. The film doesn’t explain anything terribly well. Is he evil? Is he still a Nazi? Once again, I don’t know.

The Nazi Zombie Genre Wears Thin, Just Like Everything Else In This Film

“Twenty Sky Sharks are enough to destroy entire cities”. I would love for this film to have been a silly creature romp. If I didn’t have to sit through the entire thing for this review, I would have turned it off after thirty minutes. I don’t want to be mean about the acting in the film. It seems like they’re getting non-native English speakers to speak English, so that detracts from the performances. The two leads are just wooden, they don’t show any sort of nuance or emotion in their scenes.

The Room is the gold standard for bad movies that are rewatchable. Sky Sharks seems like it was going for that kind of film, but forgot to include anything that resembled heart, comedy, or intrigue. I saw that Tony Todd was part of the cast and waited/waded patiently through the waist-high crap of the film. That Tony Todd “light at the end of the tunnel” was not a respite.

After his incredibly brief scene, the film continues with horrid scenes of reporters and airport denizens. It reaches an apex of crap near the one hour mark and continues with it’s nonsensical plot. This review might make me sound like a grump about this type of film. To be perfectly clear, this film is not in the same class as other “so bad, it’s good” films. In the end, the Sky Sharks are defeated and our old geezer that we’re supposed to root for and his two female accomplices save the day.

The Music Is The Only Slightly Redeemable Aspect

The music is synthwave electronic music. So it at least feels like a dated 80’s project in that way. But it doesn’t make up for the rest of the film being absolutely irredeemable. To say that I’ve worked on student films better than this, would be an insult to the great student-filmmakers of USC, Cal State Northridge, and Cal Arts. This is one of the worst films I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching. Under no circumstances should you watch it, even for a laugh. You won’t get any laughs out of it, just sheer boredom. Which is the shame in the middle of all of this. This film COULD have been something in the vein of Overlord or Iron Sky.

I don’t normally give scores for films, but this one I will gladly give:

0/10, Do Not Watch This Under Any Circumstances

If effort was put into the effects, the script was actually functional, and the performances in the film were better, we might have a movie on our hands. Instead, we have a 100 minute waste of time that I will never get back.

For more on horror, or actually good films that are watchable, check back to That Hashtag Show.