SHARK SIDE OF THE MOON (2022)

Studio:     Tubi/The Asylum
Director:    Glenn Campbell, Tammy Klein
Writer:     Anna Rasmussen, Ryan Ebert
Producer:  David Michael Latt
Stars:     Maxi Witrak, Ego Mikitas, Tania Fox, Michael Marcel

Review Score:

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Summary:

Stranded American astronauts discover that a secret Soviet experiment inadvertently sent humanoid sharks to the moon.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In 1984, carelessness causes humanoid sharks developed as a Cold War weapon to break out of containment inside a top-secret Soviet lab near Moscow. Recognizing that the sentient sharks could ultimately overtake the entire planet, Alyosha sacrifices himself so that fellow scientist Sergei can escape in a space shuttle with the sharks on board.

In the present day, Commander Nicole Tress prepares to launch the ship Tabula Rasa out of Cape Canaveral on a mission to the moon. Nicole’s crew includes pilot Elli Waters, medic Owen Watson, Henri, Tom, Josie, Liam, and disliked replacement engineer Michael Kelly.

The ship becomes disabled when it crashes on the far side of the moon. Tom, Josie, Elli, and Owen stay behind to repair the ship’s systems while Nicole, Michael, Henri, and Liam explore outside.

Hybrid sharks suddenly attack Nicole, Michael, Henri, and Liam. Liam dies. A booby trap then kills one of the sharks.

Sergei emerges with a young woman who is inexplicably able to breathe without an oxygenized spacesuit. Having been stranded on the moon for 40 years, Sergei is disappointed to discover the American astronauts were not specifically sent to rescue him, but Nicole offers to return him to Earth after they repair their ship. Sergei introduces the girl as his adopted daughter Akula.

A shark suddenly kidnaps Henri. Nicole insists on warning her crew about the sharks and rescuing Henri, but Sergei advises against giving away their position and convinces the astronauts to seek safety at his ship where they can gather supplies.

Back at his ship, Sergei explains how the sharks were created and ended up on the moon, where they have since colonized a massive base. Sergei reveals Akula can breathe the moon’s atmosphere because she is actually one of the sharks. Sergei took in Akula after the sharks abandoned her because she uncharacteristically looked more like a human than a shark. Sergei outfits the Americans with special suits and breathing apparatuses he designed to navigate the moon undetected.

Henri is imprisoned inside the shark’s base. Tzarina, the sharks’ leader, explains that she wants the Tabula Rasa so her shark empire can return to Earth and she can rule the planet. After Tzarina’s brute bodyguard Scar hacks off his leg, Henri reveals the ship’s location to stop further torture.

Nicole tries sending a warning message back to the ship, but it breaks up. Tom and Josie continue their work while Elli and Owen venture outside to investigate. Sharks kill Elli and Owen.

Akula, Sergei, Nicole, and Michael fight their way into the shark base to rescue Henri. Henri admits that he gave up the ship’s position, and warns that the sharks are planning to bring their massive supply of eggs back to Earth with them. Michael and Akula argue over the morality of destroying the incubation chamber for the shark eggs.

After Akula briefly confronts Tzarina, she, Sergei, Nicole, Michael, and Henri return to Tabula Rasa to discover that Tom and Josie fought off a shark attack. Sharks continue assaulting the ship. Feeling guilty about revealing the ship’s location, Henri seemingly sacrifices himself to blow up a horde of sharks.

More sharks surround the ship as the remaining astronauts prepare to launch. Sharks kill Josie and Tom. Nicole, Sergei, and Akula stop an attack on Michael by surrendering to Tzarina.

Tzarina reveals that the sharks purposely abandoned Akula near Sergei’s ship because they knew Sergei would raise her. Unable to turn her into a spy, Tzarina still used Akula as a distraction so the sharks could infiltrate the Tabula Rasa to learn how it worked. Akula insists that she never willingly aided Tzarina, but Michael questions her trustworthiness.

Nicole proposes letting the sharks rule the moon, but Tzarina counters that she wants Earth no matter what. Tzarina has Scar attack Nicole, Sergei, Akula, and Michael. Henri unexpectedly returns to kill Scar, but another shark then kills Henri.

Having recovered flight plans from Tom’s USB, Nicole proposes using Sergei’s ship to stop the shark takeover of Tabula Rasa. Akula severely wounds Tzarina in a getaway. Akula, Sergei, Nicole, and Michael then race back to Sergei’s ship.

Sergei tearfully says goodbye to Akula after realizing the best course of action is to take his ship on a suicide run to destroy the shark colony. While Sergei flies his ship into the shark base, Nicole, Michael, and Akula battle Tzarina and several other sharks. Nicole, Michael, and Akula end up thrown into the mouth of a large shark.

Sergei’s crash causes an explosive chain reaction. A resulting lava eruption blasts the Tabula Rasa out of the sky. It also incinerates the shark that swallowed Nicole, Michael, and Akula and sends that shark hurtling toward Earth.

The large shark disintegrates as it enters Earth’s atmosphere. Nicole, Michael, and Akula crash in the ocean aboard an emergency lifeboat. Before they can fully recover, however, Akula spontaneously gives birth to a hybrid shark creature. Nicole realizes the planet is in danger when additional baby sharks rise to the water’s surface.

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Review:

Something “they” (the proverbial “they,” not anyone in particular) don’t warn you about when you start this “job” (this “job” being “turning a lifelong love of B-movies into a film criticism career that eats up a major amount of time while only returning $2 in ad revenue on a good day”) is that turning your passion into a project permits those B-movies to pave a path toward burnout. Atomic monster movies and giant insect epics from the drive-in era were staples of my Saturday afternoons as a kid. My formative teen years might have formed entirely different interests if not for Full Moon’s regular doses of killer puppets and straight-to-video pulp. But the unending barrage of DIY nonsense shot on a cellphone in someone’s garage has long caused me to question, are junky horror movies really how I want to spend whatever hours I have left in adulthood?

Recognizing that I’m not yet ready to give up on the splattery silliness, midnight madness, and far-out fiction that brought me so much pleasure in the past, I’ve repeatedly adjusted my workload to ensure, as best as I can, that I still find fun in fright films and am not made actively angry by bargain basement barf. Doing so resulted in new rules like, no more movies from certain distributors/filmmakers and no more movies based on nothing beyond a supposedly clever name, e.g. “Raiders of the Lost Shark” or “Tsunambee.”

I made an exception to that second rule for “Shark Side of the Moon.” My thinking was, “You know, it’s been a while since I’ve gone back to genre entertainment’s roots in ridiculousness. Maybe it’s not the movies. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I need to start with a smile on my face, good humor at heart, and indulge in a ‘so bad, it’s good’ effort that reminds me what’s so wonderfully wild about cheap flicks that aren’t afraid to get weird.”

I instantly knew I’d made a mistake when I regrettably realized I’d inadvertently broke that first rule too. Seconds after pressing Play, the Tubi Originals logo exited the screen to make space for text proudly proclaiming “The Asylum Presents.” A pained “Ooohhh!” immediately hissed through clenched teeth. Stunned by the revelation that I’d walked into a trap, I sat momentarily motionless as the title sequence turned into a montage of blurry stock footage featuring space shuttle B-roll from the 1980s. Pressing Stop was still an option, yet I couldn’t even think straight. Was I really going to go through with this? I was. And so help me, I did.

Here’s the setup. In 1984, a couple of Russian researchers, apparently only two to be exact, secretly engineer humanoid sharks that can speak, think, and are hellbent on causing havoc. When a containment breach results in them escaping a top-secret facility, one of the scientists launches the hybrid creatures at the moon with himself as their ship’s pilot.

40-ish years later, some American astronauts prepare for a moon mission of their own. They wear Apple AirPods in their ears to communicate with Mission Control. A crosswalk button stands in to call an elevator to the launch pad. Then the next 15 or so minutes are spent on a bunch of blah-blah as the ship’s commander barks out orders about electromagnetic readings, navigation system diagnostics, engaging thrusters, and whatever other meaningless tech-speak the writers could think of to pad the runtime to a broadcast-convenient 89 minutes.

After their ship crash-lands, “Shark Side of the Moon” surprisingly takes a promising narrative turn. I’m going to spoil it, so if you don’t want to know, skip this paragraph the way you should skip this movie. Anyway, it turns out that the sentient sharks have spent the past five decades colonizing a massive base on the moon. They wear warrior gear that serves no practical purpose, wield weapons, and have a devious leader plotting to overthrow Earth.

When working with an outrageously outlandish concept like that, which is a perfect premise for B-grade insanity, a movie has to either go all the way into laughable “Lost in Space” lunacy, or play it straight to amuse an audience with incredulous astonishment. Rather than choose one of those routes to eke out entertainment, “Shark Side of the Moon” rides a mediocre middle line with a hollow personality that’s no fun at all.

One of the actors appears about as shocked/impressed to discover sentient Russian sharks created a civilization on the moon as he would be to find out Lay’s released a new flavor of potato chip. He also recites his lines with the enthusiasm of reading a grocery list, like the major thing on his mind is wondering how much traffic there’ll be on his drive home from set. Another actor has his foot violently hacked off and he exhibits the same amount of discomfort you’d get from a twig poking your ankle.

Is it supposed to be funny when the cast jogs in pretend slow-motion to simulate the moon’s gravity in front of a green screen ripped right out of “Land of the Lost?” It just looks sad. Most of the “action” consists of actors weakly waving long sticks against a pitch black backdrop, then the camera cuts to crude digital shots of 2D-looking shark creatures that wouldn’t have been acceptable even if this were a pixilated FMV from a “Wing Commander” game circa 1994.

“Shark Side of the Moon” almost won back a little favor with an ending so incompetently bizarre, it practically has to be seen to be believed. Too bad you can’t see it. I actually rewound the final few minutes two times because the camera cuts so quickly to avoid having to render even one additional second of unsightly CGI, it’s near impossible to clearly tell who’s doing what or what exactly is going on.

“Shark Side of the Moon” is available for free on Tubi. It has a gimmick for a title. It stars no one that anyone has ever heard of, or ever will. No one in their right mind would go into a movie with these qualifiers with any expectation of it being “good.”

But movies that aren’t made to be good at least have to be goofy to be enjoyable, even ironically or unintentionally. Instead of goofy, “Shark Side of the Moon” is just dumb, and there’s an incredibly wide gap between what those two words are worth.

Review Score: 20

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