Oh man, where to begin?
Production values: Very bad
Acting: Weak
Writing: There was writing?
Direction: "Here, hold this camera and point it at something."
Editing: Jump cuts, continuity errors and odd take saving, OH MY
Music: Out of this world FANTASTIC!
This was a weird one. It was
very bad by nearly all measures, but left a sort of charm. Unlike
DISASTER WARS: EARTHQUAKE vs TSUNAMI, I did not leave this one thinking no one in the production cared. Yes, the execution was very lacking, but you could "feel" this was someone's project.
What kind of project?
Well, it felt like a artsy film school student's thesis project from about 1969...someone that "studied" Warhol a bit too much but lacked his....flair. That said, SHOCK ATTACK is not the kind of 'bad' that makes you outright angry watching it. Sure it's bad; sure it LOOKS bad. The CGI is horrible. Sure, the acting and dialog and plot are all bad. But, so what? It has the "something, I don't know what" that redeems all that badness and lands on its feet as "something, I don't know what" that keeps it just on this side of contemptible.
The plot is tired: scientist trying to find a new, green power source creates a monster that runs amok (sort of).
The execution of this basic plot, however, is just different enough: the story is told in non-linear timeline (non-linear enough to make us ask, out loud, "What the hell is going on?" numerous times) and the characters have
just enough depth to make us at least wonder what's next for them, if not actually care.
I have to comment about the editing and the sound editing in particular. The editing was sloppy, but the sound editing was so bad, I actually mused out loud halfway through the movie that it COULD be on purpose! Footstep sounds did not match the characters gait, sounds were VERY loud in relation to other sounds (clothes rustling much louder than dialog, for example), etc.
By the end of SHOCK ATTACK, I new thought crossed my mind. Made in 2015, there's simply no way a producer, director or writer could hack out THIS level of dreck without it either failing on ALL levels (like DISASTER WARS) or meaning something. I wondered if the movie was
really taking itself as seriously as it appeared to be. It was so close to a "So Bad It's Good" film that was just having fun with the source material, but not quite there.
And that's the question I have now. Was it really just a satire of itself? Was it a satire of movie making? Perhaps that's reading too much into this film, but keep in mind that the final message dealt with Corporate Corruption and Evilness (as opposed to many of the 1950's sci fi flicks of similar message that dealt with government involvement where it shouldn't be, nature wise), and I HAD to ask if SHOCK ATTACK was not a satire of Corporate Art, such as the movie industry itself.
That may well be a reach. It may be nothing more than a low budget production hacked together by amateurs with no great vision. But, the pieces fit rather nicely. Evidence before the bar:
** Extremely low production values / set design in the modern age of movie making
** the Sheriff character has no name, just goes by "Sheriff" the whole movie (with a HUGE Sheriff patch on her uniform front where a name tag would normally go)
**a monster created by corporate greed yet corporate greed pays no real price in the end
** a cartoonishly low body count for a modern monster movie
** a character that appears out of nowhere in the middle of the movie, as if he were there the whole time
** a main heroine that has no redeeming qualities at all; in fact, she's quite unlikable
** Was the acting all that weak? Dialog delivery was clunky, but was there more to it in the selling of emotion?
Any single aspect of this movie taken alone suggests it's just cheap and poorly done. But, taken as a whole, a new picture emerges.
The last item of evidence?
The music. This movie managed to put together an awesome soundtrack that entertained and gripped and
fit the tone of the film at that moment. This CAN'T be an accident. If the production team can put together tunes that speak this loudly to the tone and emotion of the film, there's no way "incompetence" is driving the other apparent weaknesses.
At the end the of the day, it IS a "Bad Movie." But, my contention is it's not as bad as it appears to be
on the surface. While most contemporary viewers would gladly dismiss it as not being Michael Bay glossy or Sam Raimi nuanced, I know that true movie buffs will find something just a little bit more here.
I recommend a watch; don't expect much - certainly production values wise. But, there's "something, I don't know what" here.
2 out of 5. The more I think about it, the more I think there might
really be something interesting here.
