Film Review: Seabeast (2009)

SYNOPSIS:

Will McKenna is a down on his luck fisherman. Not only did he loose his catch on his last trip out, he swears he saw a beast rise up from the sea to take on of his crew men. His fish stories are laughed at by most of the town, until suddenly they are all dying, victims of an attack by an unknown animal.

REVIEW:

Directed by: Paul Ziller
Starring: Corin Nemec, Miriam McDonald, Daniel Wisler, Camille Sullivan

It’s a feeding frenzy!”

Here we go, a Sci Fi original movie, these can fun sometimes. There is other times however when I can’t even make it halfway through the film. Sea Beast was released in 2009 and stars Corin Nemec who has been in A LOT of these movies. Sea Beast is also in the Man eater series which is distributed by Genius entertainment, which means for some young small town horror fans this is may be all they get to see. Deciding to go ahead with the film I made a few phone calls and got some friends over. We sat in front of the television with our brews and some snacks (the best way to watch these films) and prepared for the worst.

Like most of the films put out by the Sci Fi Channel Sea Beast suffers from bad cgi, from the beginning of the film we see a really bad imposed boat on a stormy see. The crew is trying like hell to pull in their catch so that it doesn’t get lost at sea when Will McKenna (the captain) suddenly sees a large creature rise out of the waters and take one of his crew men down with him. He shakes it off; it was probably just a wave.

They port into their small fishing village and we are introduced to Wills daughter Carly. Carly has a secret of her own; she is secretly dating Danny a member of Wills crew. Her father of course wouldn’t approve, he wants her to go off to university and better her life. Danny and another crew member Drew have a plan to take their sweethearts to a nearby island for their time off. Drew informs Danny that he will meet up with them there, the loss of the catch will surely affect his pocket book so he has to work the night shift to make up for it.

Did I mention that the beastie that we saw rise from the water actually hooked onto the bottom of the boat? I guess I should have because the beast has followed them back to port. Now the Sea Beast kind of looks like what a mutant deep sea fish/man creature should. It is cgi so of course it looks kind of like a fishy monster from the Resident Evil series. Well the sea beast can apparently turn invisible (Predator look out!) and apparently people cannot see it until it is right up on you about to strike. Drew is cleaning fish on the deck when suddenly the beast climbs onto the deck.

Drew does not see it because its invisible and he continues to walk towards it when suddenly it spits that green slime that we used to get out of quarter machines when I was a kid at him. Apparently this green slime is poisonous and will cause paralysis in its victims, so they get to watch the beastie eat them. Well the beast turns off its camouflage after spitting on Drew, then does that infamous bite at the camera shot that we have come to know and love. In the back of mind I couldn’t help but to think, commercial break time.

Danny and Carly are of course on the island with Drew’s girl and have no idea what has happened to the poor guy. It is only a matter of time before we see the beast rise out of the water again, only this time there are smaller ones with it. It laid eggs that hatched, so now not only do we get the one beastie who can turn invisible and spit everywhere. We also have a lot of small beasties that climb in trees and use their tongues to snare their prey. For some reason I thought more of this movie would have happened out at sea.

Of course it’s only a matter of time before the body count starts to rise as the mom beast preys on the town and the babies prey on the teenagers in their cabin. The change in scenery almost makes its like two different films you have the Predatoresque film with the townspeople hunting the beast, then you have the kids in a cabin trying to fight off the hordes of evil little monsters that just want to eat them. Let me tell you though, Carly is a sea beast killing machine, she has the highest kill count in the entire film I believe.

Sea Beast of course is a made for television film, so don’t expect too much gore or nudity at all. What gore scenes there are however are decent for this type of movie and it got a reaction out of the guys in the room which is always good. The acting of course is what you would tend to find in these movies, and the dialogue includes such nuggets as: “If she’s dead, I swear I’ll kill her” and “Come on you mother, show your ass”. Yeah it gets like that in parts.

Now I am a fan of movies like this, I love me a good creature feature and really Sea Beast doesn’t let down. Just don’t go into the movie thinking you are about to watch Jaws and go into it to have some fun for the next 90 minutes or so and you will see that you are having a good time.