To me, this movie is perfection.

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

When The Meg was annouced in the cinema release, I thought: I know this one!It was Megalodon for the year 2002Good entertainment, if you are shark fan.

One thing that never ceases to irk me about many of the reviews on IMDb is the quick tendency by many of the reviewers to make uninformed blanket statements about any given aspect of a films production.Judging by the generally somewhat primitive grammatical compositions of these would be 'critics', one could reasonably deduce however that most of said individuals are likely from a fairly young age range and thus perhaps forgivably inexperienced.On the other hand, when such persons make idiotic statements (presumably only for the sake of being controversial) such as 'Marlon Brando was a crap actor' (yes, amazingly, some dejected wretch did write this, although not in relation to the film being reviewed obviously!) or such like then I just can't but help to become annoyed.How does all this relate to the 2004 film Megalodon though you might well ask?Well, frankly, it seems to me that all the derisory remarks about this being 'the worst film ever!' or else, 'the acting is the worst I've ever seen!' or 'The fx are the worst ever!' etc are but typical of the faecal rantings of the acerebral cretins I mentioned above. Interestingly, (and a sort of perverse hobby of mine) I find it very telling to view the other comments listed by such vehemently critical individuals. Sure enough and generally speaking when one sees the films they do bestow praise upon, well let's just say it only serves to reaffirm and solidify my theory that these are a young and none too knowledgeable audience!Make no mistake, I'm not saying for one second that this film is a cinematic masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, however, despite a fair number of flaws, it is, if one approaches it in the correct frame of mind, a mildly enjoyable affair.Let's dispel here the criticisms most often levelled at this film.The acting: Admittedly there are one or two ropey performances (most notably from the female lead Leighanne Littrel) but overall the cast equates themselves very well considering the material they have to work with. Robin Sachs especially, lends a touch of class to proceedings and it's especially refreshing to note that the filmmakers didn't take the very obvious route of making his character a villain as such characters (an oil prospector in this instance) would very normally be portrayed. Also good in supporting roles are fellow British actor, Simon Sheppard (who bears an uncanny resemblance to pop singer Robbie Williams!!!) and Al Sapienza.On to the special effects now and I can happily report again that overall, the digital effects are excellent (bar a number of instances i.e. the helicopter crash) considering the relatively small budget here. Again, I am completely baffled as to the comments from some obtuse reviewers who have slated the work here. Simply put, to said reviewers, if you want bad CGI effects, watch Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. The eponymous shark itself is very good especially (and better in fact than the CGI shark work in the far bigger budgeted Deep Blue Sea) although the animators admittedly failed utterly in conveying its propulsion movements which subsequently appear very unnatural and robotic looking.As regards the negative points: There is sadly, as many reviewers have noted, far, far too little shark action here with the big fish not even putting in an appearance until the halfway mark. Not only that, but even when on screen, there is very little sustained tension and surprisingly, no particular jumpy scenes (a staple ingredient in shark flicks I always thought!)Nonetheless, as shark films go, this is certainly well worth a look if you are a fan of said genre.

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.

I recently picked up this thing at my local supplier (Video to Go in Lansing) hoping to get my fix with a really bad movie. In this undertaking, there was some degree of success, but not extremely so.The plot is that an oil tycoon is building a huge platform near one of the poles to exploit an oil pocket that was previously unreachable. He invited a TV reporter and her camera guy along to make a documentary about his new rig. During the drilling process, they open up an underground cavern where prehistoric fish have survived for millenia (presumably). This releases the Megalodon (the ancestor of the great white shark) and the thing proceeds to try and make the crew of the rig its lunch.The acting is OK and the plot has been recycled so many times you can predict who will live and who will die. The whole thing looks like a producer and his friends got together and decided to play around with some new CGI technology they got for Christmas. On top of this, the damn Megalodon doesn't even appear until the movie is half way over. They tried to throw some environmentalist views into this thing, but it just seemed to add to an already lack-luster film.