Movie Review: Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015)

The movie stars Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Cassandra Scerbo, Ryan Newman, Bo Derek and David Hasselhoff.

To tell you the truth, after seeing the second film in this series, I honestly didn't think I would bother watching any of the other installments. However, there wasn't much on TV last night (I can only watch so much of the Olympics) and, since my wife and I couldn't agree on anything else, I ended up putting this movie on. As it turns out, it was a pleasant surprise.

Was it as good as the first Sharknado? Definitely not. But, the film did manage to be considerably better than the first sequel.

One of the reasons for this, I think, was the way this movie sets up the potential for a much bigger story. In the first two films, the sharknadoes seemed pretty random. But, this movie brought that into question because it was as though the storms and the sharks themselves were executing some sort of plan. Not only were the storms evolving in size (making them more difficult to stop), the affected areas (White House, Daytona 500, a military base, etc) seemed to be a strategic move.

This, of course, sets up a whole bunch of angles ranging from the sharks trying to wipe out humans to some mastermind with a killer weather-controlling weapon. And, that did admittedly make the movie much more interesting to watch. 

Plus, much like the first film, this movie didn't seem to be afraid to make fun of itself. Granted, the second film tried that too. But, this movie just seemed to be much more effective, whether it was Fin (Ziering) and Nova (Scerbo) emerging from a crashed plane in their underwear to Nova's assistant, Lucas (Frankie Muniz) losing his limbs one-by-one in a scene that reminded me a lot of the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

My only real complaint about this movie is I fail to see the reasoning behind keeping Fin's ex-wife, April (Reid) around. It's not that I don't like that character, it's just she really hasn't done a whole lot the past couple of movies, other than get pregnant, look for her daughter (Newman) and get swallowed by a shark.

Let's put it this way, the woman has a chainsaw for an arm. I would really think the writers would have done a better job of using that to their advantage. Yet, at least based on how this movie ended, I'm just not thinking that will ever become the case.

The first film is still better. But, I did enjoy this third installment much more than I was expecting to and would recommend it as a result of that.

My Grade: B