James Kondelik | Through the Shattered Lens

Last night, SyFy’s Shark Week continued with the premiere of Dam Sharks!

I watched it with my friends, the Snarkalecs, and we had a damn good time. Seriously, Dam Sharks is damn fun, damn entertaining, damn good, damn funny, damn gory, and pretty damn enjoyable. I’m damn glad we watched it, dammit!

I’m sure that we’ve all wondered what would happen if a bunch of sharks suddenly showed up in a river. Well, Dam Sharks provides us with an answer! Apparently, they would not only eat every human being that they came across but they would also use the left-over body parts to construct dams.

(Needless to say, by building their own dams, the sharks would also end up putting a lot of beavers out of work. If you’re wondering what happens when a beaver has nothing to constructive to devote itself to, I suggest checking out a film called Zombeavers.)

Now, if you’re asking yourself why a bunch of sharks would show up in a river and start building a dam out of human body parts … well, that means you’re not approaching this film correctly. Why it’s happening really isn’t that important. Blame it on global warming, if you must. Blame it on the military. Blame it on Big Evil Corporation. Blame it on whoever you want. The why is not important. What important is that, in this film, it’s happening. Sharks are in the river and they’re making dams. As my favorite character, Carl the anti-government survivalist (played by Robert Craighead), put it whenever anyone spent too much time wondering why the sharks were in the river, “It’s a long story.”

In fact, it’s such a long story that the film doesn’t have time to dwell on it. Especially not when so many people are hanging out around that shark-infested river…

Like many SyFy films, Dam Sharks borrows its structure from the disaster film genre. We meet various groups of people, we watch as they’re forced to deal with a sudden crisis (in this case, dam-building sharks), and we try to guess who will die and who will survive.

Now, of course, some of the people are obviously doomed. The guy in the boat who fishes with a gigantic hook that’s at the end of a chain? Oh, he’s so obviously dead. The hipsters trying to zipline over the river? No way they’re going to make it. The girl who strips down to her underwear so that she can dive off a rock? She’s not even going to reach the water before a shark gets her. That’s just the way it goes.

But others, we’re not so sure about. Much like Atomic Shark, Dam Sharks deserves a lot of credit for keeping the audience off-balance. There are a few characters who you assume will never die because they’re either too likeable or too funny. But, as we quickly learn, sharks don’t care if you’re funny or likable. They just want to eat you and add your leg to the dam.

As I mentioned earlier, my favorite character was Carl. He disliked almost everyone and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. However, Carl was also the only character who I personally would want to help me if I found myself being attacked by river sharks. He knew what he was doing. Carl spends most of the movie with Kate (Jessica Blackmore) and, working together, they are a shark’s worst nightmare. Good for them.

Of course, Carl and Kate aren’t the only ones on the river. Tanner (Jason London) is a callous CEO, the type of boss who thinks that he’s the next Steve Jobs and simply can’t understand why nobody likes him. Tanner has ordered several of his employees to spend the weekend at the river. Over the course of the day, they will play paintball, they will practice archery, and they will take a raft out onto the river. Since you really can’t blame sharks for acting like sharks, Tanner is the closest thing that Dam Sharks has to an actual villain. Jason London, who was so good in Zombie Shark, is properly loathsome as the buffoonish Tanner.

As for Tanner’s employees, they’re a mixed bunch of characters. Some of them will survive the weekend. Quite a few of them most definitely will not. From the start, it’s obvious that Pullman (Matt Mercer) and Stella (Neka Zang) are the two that we’re supposed to care about the most. Both Mercer and Zang are well-selected for their roles. When they sit on a rock and hide out from the paintball game, their conversation briefly makes Dam Sharks about something deeper than just damn sharks. Mercer is especially effective when he talks about how little personal fulfillment he gets out of his job. You truly feel bad for him.

But really, the entire film is well-cast. From the stars to the most minor of characters, everyone gets a chance to make an impression. I have to give special mention to Eric Paul Erickson, who turned the buffoonish Kenny into a rather sweet and likable character. Among the actors playing the rest of Tanner’s employees, Kabby Borders, Saxon James, and Francis Gonzalez are especially well-cast and likable. Though the film itself encourages you not to take any of it too seriously, you still find yourself hoping that they all manage to survive.

If you’re a fan of SyFy movies, you’ll love Dam Sharks! And if you don’t like SyFy movies — well, that’s just a damn shame.

Kate and Carl searching for dam sharks.

(In an earlier version of this post, I accidentally misidentified both the character of Kate and the actress who played her. I apologize for the error! — LMB)

So, Christmas is over and, at this point, you’re probably sick of hearing about Christmas movies. However, before we say goodbye to 2014 and welcome the new year, I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about two new holiday films that I saw this month.

Directed by Glenn Miller and produced by the wonderful people at the Asylum, Santa Claws tells the story of what happens when Santa Claus comes into contact with three adorable kittens. Unfortunately, it would appear that Santa is highly allergic to cats and he ends up sneezing so much that he falls off the roof of a house. Of course, this means that it’s up to the three kittens to climb into Santa’s sleigh and deliver the rest of the gifts. Fortunately, Santa’s sleigh is equipped with a GPS system and two talking reindeer.

Did I mention that the kittens can talk too?

Because they so totally can!

Okay, okay — this is the type of low-budget, straight-to-DVD family film that critics are always snarky about. But you know what? I’m a cat person and I think kittens are the cutest things in the world. And when they’re capable of talking, it’s even better! Whatever flaws the movie may have had (and it had more than a few), the kittens were cute and really, that’s all that matters.

Add to that, Santa Claws was full of Asylum in-jokes. For instance, one creepy, Santa-obsessed character also happens to love (and own) Sharknado. When the kittens pulls up the list of who has been naughty and who has been nice, one of the names at the top of list is that of frequent Asylum actor (and star of A House Is Not A Home) Gerald Webb.

Ultimately, Santa Claws is cute fun for cat lovers. Watch it on a double bill with the Grumpy Cat Christmas movie.

And, after you watch Santa Claws, you can watch a film that basically takes place in an entirely different universe. Happy Christmas was this year’s film from director Joe Swanberg. Swanberg, of course, is one of the major figures in the mumblecore movement, making films that feature improvised dialogue and which treat the mundane realities of life with the same reverence that most mainstream films reserve for chase scenes and CGI explosions. Swanberg’s previous film, Drinking Buddies, was one of the best of 2013.

Happy Christmas never works as well as Drinking Buddies but fans of both Swanberg and the mumblecore movement will probably enjoy it. Anna Kendrick plays Jenny, an irresponsible woman who might be an alcoholic. When she breaks up with her boyfriend, Jenny ends up moving in with her older brother Jeff (played by Joe Swanberg, himself). The rest of the film follows Jenny as she goes to parties with and embarrasses her friend Carson (Lena Dunham), dates an amiable pot dealer named Kevin (Mark Webber), and bonds with Jeff’s wife, Kelly (Melanie Lynesky).

Kelly is a novelist who has been suffering from writer’s block. With the help of Jenny and Carson, she starts to work on what Jenny refers to as being a “trashy, sexy mom novel.” Probably the best scene in the film features Jenny, Carson, and Kelly just sitting around and debating the best euphemisms to use while writing a sex scene.

(As well, I think that any writer can relate to Kelly’s situation here. Who hasn’t been tempted to just sell out and just write something that’s totally commercial and goes against every idealistic dream you’ve ever had about being a serious writer?)

Many viewers will probably dismiss Happy Christmas as being a film where nothing really happens but I think they’re being shortsighted. There’s a lot going on in Happy Christmas — you just have to be willing to look underneath the surface. Though Happy Christmas rejects the melodramatic conventions that we’ve come to expect from most movies, that doesn’t mean that the film itself is plotless. By the end of this rather short film, neither Kelly or Jenny is the same person that she was at the start of the film. They’ve both changed for the better but — much as in real life — that change isn’t always obvious. But the change is there, waiting to be discovered by those perceptive enough to notice.

Finally, it’s interesting to see both Anna Kendrick and Melanie Lynesky playing against type here. Kendrick especially seems to be having a lot of fun, finally getting to play a character who doesn’t always do the right thing.

And so, next Christmas, watch Happy Christmas when you want to think and watch Santa Claws when you need an excuse to go, “Awwwwww!”