The Asylum make films which are pretty much pointless to review.

They are famous for their ‘mockbusters’ – films which are hastily produced to tap into the success of mainstream Hollywood efforts. Past titles have included “Snakes on a Train”, “Transmorphers” and “Alien Vs Hunter” all of which won’t really take a movie buff to work out which films they are aping. The Asylum also excel in slightly more original efforts to – usually involving massive creatures of some description fighting each other. Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus is one of those films - which is probably pretty obvious to all but the insanely stupid come to think of it.

These films are pointless to review because there really is little to say about the films that their title and sheer concept don’t already say but in far fewer words. They do exactly what there title says they do but probably about as quarter as good as you might hope. This film does deliver on its promise of a mega shark (actually a prehistoric 60 Ft Megalodon) and a giant octopus but we rarely see them and instead are treated to lots and lots of scenes of Deborah Gibson and Sean Lawlor playing marine biologists who work out what is going on and how to stop it by mostly mixing funny coloured fluids together and peering at them inquisitively.

Of course this is just par for the course for Asylum films which did not get where they are today by spending money on effects shots of fantastic things when these things can easily be described by characters instead. We do get to see a few well-chosen bits of watery mayhem however which certainly mark this film out even if it is just by the standards of its own dubious peers. There is a scene where an oil rig is attacked by the over-sized octopus, a few submarine attacks and of course the wonderful moment when the shark leaps thousands of feet into the air and bites a passing aeroplane. The film is worth watching for this scene alone- it really is. A film so willing to defy all laws of logic, reason and rationality in order to bring us a shark attack on an in-flight aeroplane can’t be all bad in my book.

Just mostly bad.

Other than for these few fun scenes, all goes exactly as you might expect, Gibson finds a love interest, Lorenzo Lamas hams it up magnificently and the timeless battle between shark and octopus is finally decided once and for all. Except it isn’t. The truth is, if you are reading this review you have probably made your mind up about whether you want to see this anyway. Enjoy!

5/10

Review By Matt Compton