Arguably this is The Asylum’s most well known movie, the plot is simple enough and you are going to be able to pick it up right away I don’t think you are going to get lost.

All the business parts of the movie are right up front we see a giant “school” or sharks just swimming at the surface of the ocean and a water spout kind of sucks them out and up into the air.. I’m not certain that’s possible really.

And voila! A shark.. uh.. water spout. I don’t think it’s technically a tornado until it’s over land but I’m no meteorologist.

We also get treated to our Title Card.. which dissolves away to tell us we are 20 miles “off the coast of Mexico. ”

Where we see a little fishing boat just full of Shark food I’m sure.

On the boat there is some useless.. nefarious transaction going on between this overacting guy on the left and the guy on the right, it looks like the boat (the captain is the guy on the left) is catching sharks and it’s their intention to catch a whole pile of them and sell them for 1 Million dollars to the guy on the right. And as they talk we see this important piece of info:

They don’t tell you how they know there are this many or how they knew to be here to get them.. but the amount of sharks in the “pod” we saw in the beginning is.. 20K.

They make their deal but it doesn’t much matter.. because you’ll never guess what happens next.. if you picked “they get eaten by sharks when the Sharknado hits them.. ”

That’s exactly what happens. This whole thing at the beginning has no bearing on the movie, It’s filler and there is no end to the amount of filler in this film.

Suddenly we are at a beach. It’s a very Baywatch day.. They establish pretty quickly that this is someplace in Southern California but they don’t name it just yet.

We meet the hero of this series.. he’s on the left there and his name is “Fin” he owns a bar. The person on the right is Baz he is Fin’s best friend. They are surfing and admiring ladies in bikinis.

We see some more shots of the beach and we establish it’s pretty busy, and there is a carnival kind of thing on a pier and I’m sure no one will die there later.

We also find out that the water spout was either in whole or in part of a Hurricane because we see it on the news when we meet Fin’s other friend “Nova” who also works at his bar.

Nova hates sharks because one has attacked her and she doesn’t want to talk about it.

Since they’ve talked about the bad weather we now see that sharks from that “pod” are headed to the shore because reasons I guess.

No one is aware of this Shark Menace yet so they continue to surf and hang out. Including Fin..

He’s just flirting with this lady who calls him an “old man” and then a few minutes later after leaving him to “show him how it’s done.. ”

She becomes our first sharksnack. But not our last..

After seeing this lady be snacked on, Fin begins to yell at people to leave the water..

They don’t listen or more likely don’t hear him.. and pretty quickly the sharks start picking off the unsuspecting public.

We don’t see every attack just fallout, but there is quite a bit of it going on.

His buddy Baz also gets chewed upon trying to save him, and they make a vegemite joke because he’s Tasmanian. As bad as all this is this is just another damn day in Southern California.. when a hurricane is coming…

Because Fin and everyone else channels their inner Florida and just stays as close to the fucking coast as possible in the bar.

We also learn that Nova wants to canoodle with Fin because she tries to just make out with him at work and he’s not down for it..

Suddenly Fin is worried about the storm (which is also kind of channeling your inner Florida right at the last damn minute) and decides to call his soon to be Ex-wife..

He wants them all to get to higher ground, like now-ish but she’s not having it. As far as she’s concerned he can come see his daughter when it’s his time to and they are doing fine.

He closes the bar just before waves slapping the building bring in a shark which has to be killed by a pool cue.

More sharks attack as everyone flees the building..

and we finally see that Ferris wheel from earlier.. as it breaks off and starts chasing people who have clearly never seen the movie Prometheus before a few people get flattened before it smacks into a building doing way more damage than it would probably do in real life. Fin and his peeps get out and are no worse for wear.

We also finally establish that this is the Santa Monica Pier, which is west LA.

And is a real place.. including that Ferris Wheel. That sign is real too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Pier

We discover now that Fin’s bar is not in good shape and will likely need to be rebuilt.

With the immediate beach danger over Fin and his friends decide to “save” his (ex)wife and child and they head towards her house in Fin’s Truck and the next few minutes are all just shots taken from other hurricanes..

And then Fin driving a fake truck while bad music plays.

Also George who I have not mentioned before is along for the ride, he’s a frequent drinker at the bar, he’s played by John Heard and probably starts the tradition of cameos in these movies.

The streets are flooding farther into LA now, and Sharks are naturally everywhere eating people because Sharks hungry, people tasty, you know that old chestnut.

Our movie takes a pause to rescue some people who forgot how to drive and are being flooded in their cars but alas a dog is stuck in a car and in order to rescue them George ends up getting eaten.

Sorry about that George. You were kind of handsy and every one of your lines were lame enough to seem a little too real so maybe this was for the best.

Our crew heads to Fin’s wife’s house. She’s got a new boyfriend but they aren’t officially divorced now. She lives in Beverly Hills because of course.

As they approach they listen to the news tells them that sharks are falling from the sky now, we however have yet to see a Sharknado.

When they finally arrive at Fin’s old house things are pretty dry and initially they are not welcome.

There is some high school drama between the 2 of them, But they are finally let in when sharks start showing up. We of course meet his wife Ashley, played by a fairly leathery Tara Reid who really is just doing her best.

We meet Fin and Ashley’s daughter Claudia.

And we meet Ashley’s Boyfriend who’s name doesn’t matter because he’s only in the movie for about 1 minute.

As they argue a wave crashes in to the house and large sharks begin to roam the bottom floor of the house. They immediately eat the boyfriend and even though the crew make an effort to get him back all they get are his feet. Ashley isn’t too bothered by all this right away to mourn her loss so she must not have caught the feels.

They escape (after making some period jokes because there is blood in the water) from the house and head off to Van Nuys to get Fin’s other child Matt who we didn’t know about until a conversation at the house.

Just as they pull away the house.. blows up? Because of shark flooding even though they are clearly on a hill and the other houses are ok? I think the point they are trying to make is that the ex-wife should be grateful that his arrival coincided with whatever the hell this actually was. This is the trend, Fin shows up, disaster shows up with him.

Case in point: On the way they add more filler by rescuing a bunch of kids from a bus.. Ashley doesn’t want to save them, Fin decides he has to. They repel down over a bridge and pull them up it wastes time but the teacher is kind of whiney.

Then once they are finished the weather picks up, and the Hollywood sign breaks apart and kills the teacher. Oh well. But Fin gets to be the hero.

We finally get to see some of the water spouts, and they decide to explain them.. but finally here they are.. more than half way though the movie. I guess flood sharks or retention pool sharks didn’t have the same ring to it.

So they decide to leave to get his son again, and on the way a shark decides to bite through the roof of the car.

They kill it but somehow in the mayhem they manage to make a gas leak that they Mcgoffin’d in earlier worse.. so naturally this means..

The car explodes right as they escape it, this is because all cars are bombs just waiting to explode.

So they “rent” a movie car. Which is not a thing. The only thing that is real is that URL, which goes to a Houston based Car Storage place.

And what they rent is a lifted hummer3. Also they find a reason to run from the cops.

but that’s ok because this movie car has.. NOS.

As they finally approach Van Nuys, they see one of the now F5 Sharknados headed towards them.

getting a closer look you do see the sharks in these as well.

His son is learning to be a pilot, so they check the aviation school and they find him and his friends safely holed up in a little closet.

But the storm shows up and sucks one of them out, and then no one in the movie actually uses this phrase but here it is in the subs! lol.

They run back to the closet and fin holds the door (because fin has to be the hero.) while the storm destroys all the planes outside and most of the buildings.

so when they get out everything should be destroyed right?.. well. Guess what?

They got one of those tornado proof helicopters. They are not certain it will fly but after looking at it for 3 seconds his son who has maybe only been at flight school a few weeks declares “yeah it’ll fly!” So they decide to “take the fight to the sharknados.. ”

You may ask.. how are they going to do that? Well I’m glad you did because their plan seems pretty convoluted.

They break into what is maybe the most disorganized hardware store in LA which happens to be right next door and make some homemade bombs out of some propane tanks, they also conclude with out doing any math that the explosion from one might be enough to take out an F5 tornado.

Nova and Matt are going to be flying the “Mission”

While they take off to bomb the Sharknado, we find out Baz has a backup plan.

He’s going to load up the “Hummer” with bombs and then drive it into a Sharknado which will kill him probably.

In any case Nova and Matt are successful on the first try stopping one of the 3 sharknados. This however sends sharks flying and they have to shoot them or get out of the way.

An in one scene of cinematic special effects excellence.. Ashley (who is holding an unplugged electric hedge clipper) throws Fin a chainsaw, he manages to start it, and use it like a hot knife though butter to slice an oncoming giant shark in half because that’s how that works.

As another Sharknado approaches, Baz gets dragged off into the sky presumably to his death along with another Shark who is eating his other foot. We do not see Baz again.

Nova and Matt manage to nuke that second Sharknado.. and move towards the third.

Meanwhile.. after losing another couple of Aviation Students to sharks Fin and Family try to “save” some old people who are in a pool while Tornados are out, then they hole up in the building with the rest of them.

As Nova and Matt try to hit the third Sharknado, they watch from below and have a “proud” moment exchange with the old people at the retirement home.

They bomb the third Sharknado.. but alas, they miss, and they have run out of bombs. So they decide to try to descend for more..

Unfortunately a Shark attacks the Chopper, and Nova falls out and into the wide open mouth of a giant shark and she is presumably dead.

In spite of screaming Matt manages to land the chopper with no issues.

But Fin tells him he’s “going to finish this”

So he hops in the GMC Monstrosity and heads towards the base of the last Sharknado, luckily for him, it’s not really moving around much.

He bails at the last second just before hitting that NOS and igniting some of the bombs.. and the last Sharknado is toast.

All of the remaining Sharks fall down out of the sky and Fin sees a large one headed for them.

So naturally he leaps in it’s mouth with his Chainsaw which he finds someplace.

While they assume he’s dead he is really sawing himself out of the carcass

After birthing himself he goes back in to the shark and pulls out an intact Nova who is not dead.

And she decides she’s into Matt and no longer into Fin, and she also offers up her real name.

And then Ashley decides to kiss on Fin. Not once this whole time has she mentioned her now dead boyfriend.

And then you kind of see a broken LA.

And that’s it.

So the movie is *slow* so slow.. sometimes. I bet they could have cut 25 minutes off it. It’s kind of painful to sit through. Mostly this movie is about Fin getting his wife back because he happens to be in the right place at the right time to impress her or trouble follows him right as he shows up and he’s secretly a death god. Ashley on the other hand is as bad or worse than him the entire movie they also tried to imply this kind of relationship with Fin and Nova, like she’d pick up a gun and he’d say “It’s really hot when you do that” or Nova would touch him and they’d show you Ashley react over it, it was real dumb.

Sharknado2 is in 2 weeks, we are out of town this weekend.