Nobody’s going in to SEA BEAST with any wild notions of high art—and frankly, once I realized that the main guy was Parker Lewis and he was old enough to have a teenage daughter, I was both full of low expectations and a little disheartened about how old I apparently am now. Oddly enough, though, I was distracted enough by a movie that turned out to be better than I’d anticipated to forget my descent into ancientness.
The whole mess starts at sea with a nasty storm and some fishermen. Well, one ends up dead, and though it’s said the storm was the killer, it was actually a hungry creature that popped up out of the water. Fast forward a few days and we find Captain Will McKenna (Corin Nemec) still shaken over the death of his crewmember—and a little freaked out by the thing he thought he saw. Then, of course, people start dying and leaving behind piles of gooey entrails, Will’s daughter and boyfriend (Miriam McDonald and Daniel Wisler) wind up in all sorts of danger, and it’s up to Will, his biologist girlfriend (Camille Sullivan), and the town drunk to stop the onslaught of Sea Beasts before they take over first Cedar Bay … then the world.
SEA BEAST—which, by the way, REALLY should have been called SEA BEASTS—is a good, solid creature feature that gets a whole lot right. First of all, as part of genius entertainment’s “Maneater” series (which features a bunch of deadly killer stuff like snakes and monkeys and such), SEA BEAST harkens back to the days of monsters with no agenda. There’s no underlying environmental theme here, no political tint about how they’re killing humans because they smelled blood in the water (PRIMEVAL used that one), and no all-encompassing mythology to explain the big guys’ bloodlust—seems maybe they’re just hungry. They keep it all simple. Also a plus is that the acting is decent, even when the lines are cheesy or the situations questionable. Finally, even with the sub-par CG-ness of the beasties, there’s still something scary about a monster that you have to watch eat you alive after it’s paralyzed you with its venom. The action moves along, there’s a nice and gory kill count, and there are a few funny moments that made us laugh out loud.
There is, as expected, a high level of made-for-TV style dialogue, and, like I said, these aren’t the coolest monsters to look at. But there’s nothing in here that’s inherently bad; in fact, I can honestly say this was an enjoyable 87 minutes for anyone looking for a new sea-creature-that-wants-to-eat-you-up scare.
– Amber Goddard
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
