Beast of the Bering Sea (2013)

That was an excellent one.

Good concept, poorly executed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It's uncanny. Feisty, pretty Donna Hunter (Cassie Scerbo), who works with her dad and younger brother (they are Gold Hunters in the arctic) welcomes new deckhand Owen Powers (Brandon Beemer) with as much venom as she can muster – but he's almost as pretty as she is! Turns out he's a good guy as well, so one would consider it an inevitability they are destined for a long and fruitful life together. And yet to criticise such 'cheesiness' (cheesy: (a). Of poor quality; shoddy: a movie with cheesy special effects. (b). Vulgarly pretentious or sentimental: a cheesy romantic comedy) is proof of not understanding the point that it's 'cheese' is entirely deliberate. Therefore, it is beyond criticism because it is supposed to be ridiculous.I've never really understood this. A horror comedy that is neither horrific nor comedic, just hovering somewhere in between. You either go into a horror film wanting to enjoy it by laughing at it, or to invest in the story it is telling and go along with it. It's impossible to go along with this film because the titular creatures, the Sea Vampires disturbed by the salvagers are adorably bad. Even the illustrations on publicity material depict them as being just as cartoon-like as they are on-screen. And yet the players are earnest and don't play anything for laughs.The creatures appear to loosely be based on stingrays, but with bulbous eyes and wide, frog-like mouths. For the hilarity of their every appearance, they are deadly beasts, killing Donna's father as well as other peripheral characters. But not to worry too much – she and Owen are finding comfort in each other's melancholy. It seems as if the ice maiden is about to be thawed out. So disturbing a race of killer jellies has its benefits! The creatures are routinely defeated by grow-lights used by the local villain to cultivate marijuana (the swine), which is inventive, if nothing else. Ultimately, this film seems to have been produced to fit the 'so bad its good' criteria, which as an ambition, baffles me.

Bering Sea Beast (2013) * 1/2 (out of 4) The Bering Sea has become so popular with "Deadliest Catch" I guess it was just a matter of time before SyFy used it for one of their monster movies. A family of fisherman team up with a scientist when they discover that the old legend of "sea vampires" are actually true and now the creatures are attacking people who work this part of the sea. BERING SEA BEAST is pretty much what you'd expect from a SyFy film as they take a name some know (Jonathan Lipnicki, the kid in JERRY MAGUIRE) and mix in a rather silly story and some of the worst special effects that you're ever going to witness. These awful effects are certainly the highlight of the film because it's clear that they either didn't have much money to come up with something better or they just wanted to make them so bad that people would talk about them and bring other viewers to the film. These effects are certainly among the dumbest you're ever going to see in a SyFy film but they did get me thinking that it would be pretty fun for a filmmaker to make a documentary about all the horrid effects these types of films have produced over the past decade. I will say that the effects are so silly and bad that they do somewhat keep you "entertained" by everything else going on. None of the performances are all that memorable but I will say that Cassie Scerbo helps keep the film moving. As for the former child star Lipnicki, it's certainly nice seeing him as he is today but his performance was pretty bad. The death scenes are all mostly forgettable but then again the bad CGI really doesn't help anything. What keeps BERING SEA BEAST from being entertaining is the fact that it takes itself way too serious. I've never understood how the filmmakers could give us such awful effects but at the same time expect us to take everything else serious.

A rather lame movie, but it does have bright spots and it is a long way from SyFy's worst. Most of the acting is decent, especially from Jonathan Lipnicki(such a cute child star he was) who gives an earnest performance and the attractive Cassie Scerbo. The scenery is nice too with some competent photography(with exceptions) and the ending has some exciting action. There is a lot wrong with Bering Sea Beast, the biggest problem being the special effects, atrocious is a good word. The sea vampires look more like garbage-bin-bags with teeth and bat-wings, and aside from how they look they are also without personality or menace, you actually cannot take them seriously. Their attacks are not suspenseful or tense in the slightest, more veering between unintentionally comical, and suffer from some sloppy and rushed editing. The music plays too much of a dirge in places and is very generic stuff complete with unconvincing and at times bizarre sound effects and mixing. Bering Sea Beast is very badly written, the dialogue just reeks of cheese apart from the odd moment of snappy banter, at the beginning there are some laughs but later on it is very grating, while the characters are stereotypical caricatures and nothing more. Especially the villain, who had a subplot that was clichéd and out of place, and the over-compensated way he was played was the chief exception to the "decent acting" plus-point earlier mentioned. The story ends on an exciting note but much of it was dull and far too ridiculous to be taken at face value, sense of terror, tension, fun, thrills, suspense and even logic are almost completely thrown out of the window. There is some fun scattered here and there but too much of it is tiresome and grating, overall while SyFy have done much worse Bering Sea Beast was rather lame. 3/10 Bethany Cox

O my god, awesome. I give it a 5 for entertainment value. Now, Citizen Kane this is not, but you know what you're getting with SYFI Saturday night creature features. The monster has a certain, shall we say "garbage bag" effect going on. And, at one point, I swear I saw a wire just as it was being erased by the cgi. The acting was decent, Johnathon Lipnicki did a good job. The special effects were about what you would expect. I won't give it away, but pay attention when they have the dad in the back of the truck. You won't see that coming. If you love cheese, check this out and, hey it put my husband to sleep, so I didn't have to listen to his comments.