#SamQualiana

[adamwatchesmovies]

Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast (2012)

Anyone in their right mind would take less than five minutes to identify Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast as complete garbage, turn off their TV, eject the DVD from their machine and promptly smash it with a hammer. It lures you in with a title so crazy it promises some laughs. It delivers a no-talent, zero-effort generic monster movie.

On February 6, 1999, an earthquake in the state of New York unleashes a prehistoric snow shark: a carnivorous fish that swims through the snow and devours every bad actor it encounters without mercy. Hopefully, the combined efforts of a cryptozoologist (Andrew Elias), biologist (Kathy Thiel Murphy), shark hunter (Cameron Caine), and a couple of random shmos (which include director, writer, cameraman, special effects wizard Sam Qualiana and Michael O’Hear) can take down this monster.

Talking about this film is a waste of time. There’s nothing good, or even mediocre about it. The special effects are awful, the acting worse, the script lousy, the plot rambles, and none of it makes sense. It’s obvious the casting was determined entirely by whether the director's friends wanted to be in a movie called Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast. Anyone who answered 'yes' was hired. The parts were then delegated as follows: Anyone who could hold a gun steady so muzzle flashes could be added in post-production while they pretended to shoot at something that wasn’t there was cast as a random hunter. Anyone who could memorize their lines if they were given to them a day in advance was given a leading role. Any hot chicks willing to take off their clothes didn't even need to do the first two. That extra level of sleaze from the nudity ensures Snow Shark won't even be shown to the director’s family and friends and any run-of-the-mill viewers will want to crawl into a hole to die alone.

I cannot believe that director, writer, etc. etc. Sam Qualiana genuinely likes movies and filmmaking. While there’s a director’s commentary on the DVD and a bunch of short films thrown in with the Bonus features, there's no passion here. Snow Shark screams “I’ve seen a couple of movies once, I bet I could do that”. Only the most disillusioned, or cruel sort of person could look at this film and release it to the public. You’ve seen YouTube videos with better production.

You may look at the cover for Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast and anticipate a film so awful it will be enjoyable. You won’t be able to derive any joy from its agonizing 79 minutes. The killing blow is the audio. Often, you can barely hear what the characters are saying. When people open their mouths, you hear the unmistakable fuzz of dialogue that was recorded with the wrong equipment using the wrong settings. You'd be driven mad by listening to that noise for an extended period. There aren’t any subtitle options available either, so you can’t mute the film. Snow Shark can’t even follow conventional storytelling techniques or fall back on lazy clichés. It’s barely watchable. (On DVD, March 31, 2017)