Megalodon

At only an hour and a half, it's not a bad little flick. The acting is satisfying, there's a few good one-liners, the visual effects (all CGI, and well done considering the tiny team that did them) aren't distracting enough to detract from things, and the story was plotted and played out decently. Obviously could have been more with a bigger budget, but that's a truism for all indie productions. The small handful of makeup effects were especially well done.

The only nitpick I have is with the sound mix. In some places the dialoge can be difficult to make out, but nothing a quick rewind-replay and a closer listen won't clear up.

6 1/2 or 7 out of 10, considering it does better than some Hollywood efforts (Deep Blue Sea, anybody?).

I really hate ripping up low budget movies because that is the business I am in and I would hate for someone to do it to me. I'll say something positive first and then move on. THIS IS THE BEST SHOT ON VIDEO SHARK MOVE I HAVE EVER SCENE!!! With that being said lets go to the breakdown: This entire movie was shot in a studio on high quality video. The sets are so and so and the acting is also so and so. There is no nudity even though we were all expecting to see some from one of the two lead female actors. Even though this movie takes place on the largest oil platform in the world there is a surprising lack of background actors. This is summed up at a dinner table scene where the multi billionaire owner of the oilrig tells the reporters visiting that they are so automated that they only need 24 people to run the entire platform. Even with that I don't think we see 24 people the entire movie. Couldn't they have done the old Beastmaster trick of having extras walk back and forth in front of the camera during some scenes? It's a move folks. Lets at least try to fake it. The movie is complimented heavily with CGI some of which is good (But that's the exception) but the sheer amount of it starts to take its toll. The oilrig is CGI; the helicopter at the beginning is CGI; All the underwater scenes are CGI; The shark is CGI; The snow outside on the ice flow is CGI; Many of the interior sets are either CGI or enhanced with CGI; The yacht at the end of the move is CGI; with all this couldn't we at least add some CGI actors??? With everything going against it there were some times when I was a little interested in the movie and wondered where it would go, but in the end I found myself just trying to guess which actors would die and how. I'll give it one star because it at least kept my attention long enough to finish the thing. I'm mainly disappointed because there was obviously some money involved in this move and even with all that, and some great computer talent, they couldn't save it in the end. Its called writing folks. Take a class. MKB

Usually shark movies are fairly horrible, much like most zombie movies. And "Megalodon" is not really an exception from the standards of shark movies. It has everything you expect it would; fake shark and bad CGI effects. Check and check.

The story in "Megalodon" is about an oil drilling company which has built a massive rig which will revolutionize the oil drilling business. Being capable of drilling at depths which are previously unreachable, then they invoke the anger of environmentalists. Whilst drilling at over 5000 feet, they find a massive subterranean underwater cave which has a myriad of previously undiscovered aquatic creatures. But living in the cave is a massive Carcharodon megalodon.

While the story is straight forward and fairly generic for a movie of this genre, then the movie actually turned out to be semi-alright, in terms of being watchable and providing some entertainment for the audience. However, it just was bludgeoned to death by horrible CGI effects and fairly bad acting.

The concept idea for the drilling rig was quite good, and they managed to show it in a fairly adequate manner, although the CGI effects could have been better. And the combination of CGI effects and real props did work out well enough in favor of the movie.

While on the topic of effects, then I will admit that the luminescent aquatic creature designs were really impressive and looked really good on the screen. So thumbs up to the CGI special effects team on this achievement.

"Megalodon" has no one familiar on the cast list, and I can't really claim that people were doing great jobs with their given roles and characters. Now, whether this was the fault of the restrictive script or the talents (or lack thereof) of the actors, I do not know.

"Megalodon" is not an impressive movie in any way, and it is the type of movie that you watch once and laugh about it, then never put it back in your movie player again. For a shark movie, then this movie was lacking action, shark attacks and the sense of fear, that we saw in "Jaws", for example.

It's easy to pick on MEGALODON and call it a bad movie. It's not original, it lacks a bit suspense every now and then, the acting is just average and you can tell that the budget was low, to name only a few things. But if you manage to look beyond its mediocrity, you can see that the film-makers really tried to make it as decent as possible. And you can only appreciate that. Now , if it wasn't for CGI-technology, this movie simply would not have been made. Only the actors and a few sets were real, the rest all CGI. It looks real good most of the time(the helicopter in the beginning and the sailboat at the end,...) but sometimes it fails desperately (that same helicopter crashing on the platform).

You already know that this movie is about a prehistoric mega-shark rising from the depths and terrorizing the crew of an oil-rig. And with it's title being MEGALODON, I thought the mega-shark was considerably lame. There's only one fairly decent attack-scene when he bursts through the ice. Decent in terms of that he finally does something. The rest of its screen time you see him swimming around bumping into things. Well at least they didn't make him roar or something. And the explosion at the end was ridiculous: They just disappeared!? But still, this movie never becomes really boring, 'cause the CGI frequently provides nice images to look at, with the 'cave-exploring'-sequence being a good example (nice glowing flubbery creatures). There are a few other shots worth mentioning. They're pretty pointless, but stylish. It was when they showed that smaller dinosaur-fish with the sharp teeth. The creature-designer actually made a real good-looking sculpture (no CGI) for this one.

I admit, to some MEGALODON may not live up to its humble 4-star-rating, but I think you should at least appreciate the effort the film-makers made for trying to make it work. And even if it can't compete with most of the underwater-creature-flicks, it still is way better than that Casper Van Dien SHARK ATTACK-tripe.

If you plan to watch this movie hoping to see another good action-thriller movie, with bad shark attacking movie, just forget this one: bad acting, bad story, awful FX. It has nothing but a good name. I was hoping to see another Deep Blue Sea-like movie, only with greater shark and better feeling. Well I'm very disappointed. I tried to watch the entire movie, but after 15 minutes I've started to fast-forward the movie and watch only the key scenes. Moreover the famous Megalodon, is poorly designed and animated. The outdoor scenes seems to be computer-rendered and the overall feeling of the movie compares with the HBO made movies. Bottom line: if you want to see a shark movie watch again Deep Blue Sea - You'll be more satisfied.