(DVD and Digital; ANDERSON DIGITAL/ITN DISTRIBUTION/TITAN GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT (79 minutes/Unrated); 2014)
Okay… let’s get this out of the way right now: POSEIDON REX is no SHARKNADO or SHARKTOPUS. Personally, I found those “SyFy Originals” unwatchable, at best. Here, while the acting (particularly by the leads, Brian Krause, Anne McDaniels and Steven Helmkamp) is histrionically over the top (as is the dialogue, which may account for the acting), you can at least conceive of some of this stuff actually happening… well… maybe not. But, still…
The special effects are hit and miss: The CGI gunfire is bad… really bad; the creature – a sea-dwelling cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, though bigger and meaner, with tiny flippers for arms – is, alternately, awesomely believable in the underwater sequences or appears to be a cartoon overlay that never quite matches up with the surrounding terrain when it’s out of the water. And, even though the characters seem to contradict themselves from one line to the next, it’s still better than those horrid movie remakes of STARSKY AND HUTCH, GET SMART and THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. By the way, if the military represented here (some unidentified branch of the United States Armed Forces and the Belize Coast Guard) is the best and brightest, we are all doomed to be eaten by gigantic beasts of some variety. This movie is kinda like a train wreck or watching the Chicago Cubs… as devastating and horrible as it is, you just can’t look away.
POSEIDON REX is a great movie to put on when you and your friends are just hanging out, looking for something mind-numbingly incoherent to fill an hour-and-a-half. Like all of those cheesy 1950s monster and science fiction movies, this is the good kind of bad, a bizarre mish-mash of THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (the template for director Mark L Kester), GODZILLA (GOJIRA, the original), KING KONG (the one from 1976, with Charles Grodin in the title role… or was it Jessica Lange? Oh, wait… never mind), JURASSIC PARK, GREMLINS, THE DEEP and CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. There’s even a hint of A-TEAM (the original television series with Mister T) in there as, with plenty of firepower on display, no one is seemingly capable of hitting the broadside of a barn (or a forty foot tall sea behemoth). So… suspend belief (in good acting and dialogue), disengage those brain cells and give POSEIDON REX a try, but… be warned: THERE WILL BE A SEQUEL!