Shark Side of the Moon (2022) Review
Spoiler-free so you can read before you watch
Horrorific content by christina on August 23rd, 2022 | Movie Review | Alien, Survival, Sci-Fi, Mutant, Campy, Creature, Space, Mad Scientist, Shark, B-Horror, Military
Add Shark Side of the Moon (2022) to your Watchlist
It's about American astronauts who uncover a shark-human hybrid civilization on the moon after a rogue Soviet scientist deposited experimental super-soldiers there decades earlier.
Shark Side of the Moon was directed by Glenn Campbell and Tammy Klein and stars Tania Fox, Terrance Livingston Jr., Ego Mikitas (Megalodon), Konstantin Podprugin, Lindsey Marie Wilson (Bull Shark), Maxi Witrak, and Reginald William Stalling.
From the minds behind The Asylum's Dune clone and the team responsible for The Asylum's Aladdin knockoff comes The Asylum's latest Tubi Original, Shark Side of the Moon. Tammy Klein and Glenn Campbell introduce Russian human-shark hybrids as the latest cosmic predators just as people are prepared to colonize the cratered moon again. Unfortunately, Shark Side of the Moon is a dire, cheap-looking production that a late-night slot on a cable channel would best suit. Yet, despite its ineptitude, the film's bizarre mashup of genres is strangely fascinating.
The gist is simple. Scientists in Russia create humanoid supersoldiers that are part sharks and can survive any situation. They escape the facility where they were made and are flown to the moon by scientist-cosmonaut Sergey. Some forty years later, an American mission to the moon, led by commander Nicole Tress, crash-lands on the far side of the moon. They encounter an advanced civilization of human-shark species. The Americans want to go home, but Sergey and his half-shark, half-human daughter Akula wish to hitch a ride. Unfortunately, the sharks also want to steal Nicole's vessel for their travels to Earth, followed by world domination.
Narratives often rely on sci-fi rhetoric to create cheap characterization and plot gimmicks that are eventually ignored. Ideas such as "hybrid shark army," "lava compound," and "baby hybrid sharks" are used solely for laughs and have no other purpose. Scenes often seem carelessly edited, with whole chunks of exposition seemingly randomly cut out.
Sergey's spacesuit being fully exposed is just one of the many plot points that make this film ridiculous. The finale is also mind-bogglingly inept. Writers Ryan Ebert and Anna Rasmussen understand what Tubi viewers want to watch on a weekend night: Hammerhead sharks, great white sharks, and other types of sharks "swimming" underneath the moon and devouring astronauts.
The Asylum's productions are cheap and unimpressive, with poorly rendered CGI and sets that look like they're straight out of a low-budget '90s film. Even the indoor shuttle sets look more like something you'd find in an elementary school science fair than in a major motion picture. The queen of the sharks is a terrible CGI figure who looks like she came straight out of a bad video game. The special effects in this movie are so awful that they make even other bad shark movies look good by comparison. The people behind this movie didn't care enough to put any effort into it. Practical items like the "flare gun" (a prop pistol wrapped in cardboard) or the engineer wearing an iPod earbud as his communications device have humorous homestyle vibes. However, this cannot be said for the prototype shark soldiers, which look like they have had no shading, coloring, or anything past the clay-gray sculpture stage and animate like a FaceTime transformation filter.
Performances are not impressive because the actors are forgettable. Maxi Witrak is the only actor with any screen presence. The replacement engineer is more interested in looking cool than doing his job, and the rest of the crew are portrayed as foolish and childish. There is no emotional weight to anything that happens, and the actors are not given any opportunity to show their range. They even leap to mimic the moon's bouncy low-gravity. The "battle sequences" in the movie are just people flailing around with props while the post-production team tries to insert space sharks. The characters have no idea how to fight their computer-generated opponents, which looks awful. Even the non-action scenes are poorly done, showing that the whole movie is a mess.
Worth Watching?
I can't help but wonder if that's what the 'Shark Side of the Moon' experience is all about. It's a movie for pizza and beer lovers, except instead of pizza, you have multiple shots, and instead of beer, you have malt liquor. There is no escaping the awful trademarks of The Asylum's foolishness on a tight budget, which will still delight its target audience. Shark Side of the Moon gets the low rating it deserves based on the most generous standards for film criticism. Still, there's no denying that it will bring joy to countless people who enjoy SYFY movies that feature natural disasters with animal names. Shark Side of the Moon knows it is supposed to be laughed at and provides what is promised, which is more than can be said for con artists like Clownado or Ouijageist.
