Aquanoids

Aquanoids (2003)

Sometime in the past we see a monster attack and kill a couple of people on a beach. Years later we see a nice looking girl scuba diving when she is attacked by a similar creature. This woman is named Vanessa and her mother was one of the people killed in the flashback. She tries to warn the town about the return of the creatures, called Aquanoids, but no one will listen. Especially the crooked mayor and his partner in crime who are looking to build a shopping mall and can’t afford a monster running about. Throw in an “aqua baby” (hey a monster has needs…), a homicidal cop, and lots of scooter riding footage to pad the runtime and you have Aquanoids.

And honestly you can keep it! Take it from someone who watches a ton of really bad movies, this one is just awful. The story is an odd mishmash of plots from much better movies tossed together in such a way that none of them make any sense. You have characters that go homicidal for no apparent reason, terrified victims taking the time to put on life vests, and tons of scooter riding around town. Really this movie is all over the place and makes very little sense. This mess is made worse by some of the most god-awful acting that I’ve ever seen. Not only can’t most of the cast play scared, they can’t even play dead! Seriously I’ve never seen so many “dead” folks breathing in my entire life. Oh and the pacing of the movie is dreadful. In spite of “borrowing” from several other movies it doesn’t seem that they had enough material for the movie. So we get to see shot after shot of people riding scooters, swimming, walking, and all sorts of other uninteresting stuff. Really boring stuff here that had me struggling to stay awake.

The ineptitude in front of the camera continues behind it as well. First the creatures are terrible. If you are going to try and pull off a creature in a rubber suit, then actually spend some time on the suit. Sure it might look goofy, but there is some fun and laughs to be had. I also don’t often spend time in the review talking about editing, but here I really have to. I’ve already mentioned all the meaningless scenes that were added to stretch the runtime, but I also wanted to talk about the look of the movie. Nothing makes your movie look cheap like a bad set of editing tools and boy do they have them here. You get all kinds of consumer level side wipes and cuts. If you are going to put a movie out and try to get people to pay for it you need to do a whole lot better then this.

I actually have more material in my notes, but I’m done wasting any more time on this movie. Trust me it is a dreadful mess that doesn’t deserve any of your time. Avoid this turkey at all costs.

½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer