Jackson Booth-Millard The first film in the series, Giant Octopus, was rubbish, as was the sequel, Crocosaurus, the low-budget Mega Shark movie franchise, made before the awful Sharknado series, continued with this third instalment of nonsense. Basically a tugboat pulling a huge iceberg arrives at a port in Alexandria, Egypt, but the iceberg shatters and releases a megalodon from suspended animation, it begins to reign terror, flipping the tugboat, launching it miles away to Giza and decapacitating the head of the Sphinx. Countries worldwide put their ports on lockdown, and the United Nations propose to develop a weapon to combat the shark. At Pearl Harbor, Jack Turner (Stargate SG-1's Christopher Judge) and Rosie Gray (Elisabeth Röhm) will pilot Mecha Shark, a new untested prototype submarine that resembles the megalodon. The megalodon is confirmed to be in the South China Sea, battleships the USS Charles and the USS Charles Davis rendezvous with the Mecha Shark to attack the mega shark, torpedoes are launched, but the Virginia is inadvertently sunk. Following the failed operation, Jack installs special A.I. named "Nero" (Paul Anderson) into Mecha Shark's computer system, while the megalodon strikes the AR Event Horizon oil platform off the coast of Australia, triggering an oil spill. While Rosie takes Mecha Shark back into the water to engage with the giant shark, Jack and Admiral Engleberg (Matt Lagan) have a heated argument about whether to seal the oil pipeline or continue the pursuit of the shark, Rosie uses the submarine to seal the leak. Mecha Shark and mega shark then engage in battle, the megalodon is able to swerve a launched torpedo, which ends up hitting and sinking a ship, then another failed torpedo launch causes a landslide, which sends the submarine offline, and knocks Rosie unconscious. The Nero system notifies Jack of the situation, but the submarine manages to blast its way out of the debris, while the shark attacks another of the attack ships and destroys it. With Rosie unconscious, it is suggested that the Nero system can control the Mecha Shark by itself, but when it returns to sea, it is badly damaged by the megalodon. Rosie wakes up, and Dr. Emma MacNeil (singer Debbie Gibson) warns that the shark is heading to Sydney, Australia, Nero goes back online following a malfunction, and heads there to engage with the giant creature. But Nero malfunctions again, this time, the Mecha Shark enters Drone Mode, a fail-safe system programmed to complete its task without the safety protocols, after another attack from the megalodon, the robotic submarine goes back online and determines all humans in sight as a threat. The Mecha Shark goes on a rampage through the city, Emma calls Rosie and suggests luring the malfunctioned submarine back to the ocean, where the mega shark will attack it, the megalodon meanwhile sinks the Charles Davis, killing Admiral Engleberg and everyone aboard. The Mecha Shark is blasted back into the water by a squadron of fighter planes, Jack boards a second shark submarine to help, the shark triggers a dislodged torpedo, destroying both the creature and the Mecha Shark, and Jack reveals to Rosie that he copied Nero's system into a flash drive. Also starring Beejan Land as Roy, Kate Avery as Sergeant Brooks, Hannah Levien as Sandy and Emma Rose Maloney as Stacy. I may have recognised a face or two in the cast, but it doesn't matter, and the special effects are only the tiniest bit improved, but they are wasted, a giant shark versus a robotic shark sub with the personality of KITT from Knight Rider is ridiculous, as before it is awful, a stupid story, and a waste of time science-fiction horror. Poor!

Leofwine_draca MEGA SHARK VS. MECHA SHARK is another giant monster flick from The Asylum boasting Z-grade CGI effects and a really stupid plot. It seems to homage TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA in the tale of a giant megalodon terrorising mankind, leading scientists to build a giant mechanical shark to combat it. The story is cheesy and stupid, a mixture of bad actors delivering cheesy lines and really badly animated scenes of destructive mayhem. Even monster fans will find little to tempt them here.

Michael_Elliott Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark (2014) BOMB (out of 4) Once upon a time we were given GODZILLA VS. MECHA GODZILLA but The Asylum has delivered a giant killer shark vs. a man-made steel shark. That's pretty much the only storyline that you need as we have a giant real shark doing damage so the government creates a mechanical shark to go after it. Oh yeah, Christopher Judge and Elizabeth Rohm play a couple trying to kill the real shark. This is the third film in the series and perhaps I'm just growing tired of them but I really, really, really hated this movie with a strong passion. Yes, the first two films in the series were bad but so are countless other "one giant vs. another giant" movies. I really don't expect great acting, award-winning direction or anything of good quality but I do hope to be entertained at the very least. A lot of times these movies are entertaining simply because they're just downright fun and know not to that themselves very seriously. Sadly, that's not the case here as the screenplay, direction and everything else is so serious and so over-dramatic that you really have to wonder if anyone had ever seen one of these films before. Why on Earth this thing was made so boring, so dramatic and so unfunny is beyond me but there's just not a single second of this film that's entertaining. Even worse is that the movie doesn't really feature any good kill scenes with the two monsters and instead of action scenes we're given really bad dialogue sequences that just drag on and never go anywhere. The performances are what you'd expect from a movie like this so I'm not going to blame the actors too much. The direction certainly isn't all that memorable and especially with some downright awful and horrendous slow-motion sequences, which just made me want to hit the stop button. Again, if you're going to make a low-budget monster movie like this, don't forget you're making a low-budget monster movie. Those who view these want to have fun.

TheLittleSongbird The Mega Shark movies are the kind that aren't to be expected much from, but even with that in mind I personally didn't consider Giant Octopus or Crocosaurus particularly good, some fun moments, mostly for the so-bad-it's-good value there was, but mostly they were too amateurish and ridiculous to take it even for what they were. Mecha Shark is the best of the three but from personal opinion it was only passable. It is the best-looking of the trilogy definitely, the scenery is very nice as well as the underwater shots and the editing is reasonable. The score is catchy and in a way drives the movie rather than bog it down. The special effects are better than average if not great, a huge improvement on its predecessors anyhow(and I'd go as far to say that much of the underwater stuff was quite good), sure there are a few ropey ones here and there. Much of the acting is not bad at all despite not having very strong material to work with, the playing-it-straight approach is adopted and it suits the movie just fine, doing it without going through the motions. Elisabeth Rohm and Christopher Judge are commanding leads. And the last act is a lot of fun, the pace is snappier and while inevitably predictable some of it is amusing and at times endearingly silly. There is an exception regarding the acting and that is Deborah Gibson in her brief appearance, if she had a bigger role she would have come across as less phoned in. The characters are not annoying as such but are not very interesting, and that is including the shark who is more goofy than menacing. The script mistakes insultingly cheesy for snappy, the jargon is really stilted too and a lot of scenes have dialogue and voice-overs that over-explain things. If there was one word to describe the script, bloated would be it. The concept was ridiculous in the first place, but two thirds of Mecha Shark is rather indifferent until the last act really picks up. That it's predictable is to be expected, but the suffocating pacing, lack of tension or suspense and scenes that are very derivative, with a few parts reminiscent of those from its predecessors(like the mid-air leap jet chomp from Giant Octopus) but also reading too much of inferior copies. They were mildly fun previously while making you feel stupid at the same time, here they were just tired. All in all, at best it's reasonably fun and it is easily the best of the Mega Shark trilogy. But while it is a significant improvement technically and acting-wise, there could have been room to have more fun and the improvement does not translate into the writing department, with a sense of not just trying to do too much but also feeling very bland and indifferent. 4/10 Bethany Cox