Sky Sharks (Blu-ray Review)
Truth be told, I have never seen a Sharknado film in its entirety, though I have seen my fair share of campy movies. There never seems to be a shortage of the style which can be a double-edged sword. Some are just bad they are funny and some are just so bad that they’re, well, bad. The first low-budget campy title of 2021 is none other than Sky Sharks, directed by Marc Fehse (The Power of Soul). Fehse and crew take viewers on a 106-minute romp that combines sci-fi with humor, action and gore…plenty of gore. A film that is definitely not for the squeamish at heart, or the prude at heart for that matter, Sky Sharks deliberately delivers as an in-your-face production.
Film 
The film is set in the modern day, 75 years after the closure of World War II. A research team previously sent to the arctic have stumbled upon a massive Nazi navy vessel which is housing, you guessed it, sky sharks. Piloted by Nazi zombies, because after all, who else would pilot squadrons of airborne great whites and hammerheads, the flying fish attack helpless commercial jetliners and their passengers within. The fearless zombies utilize a menagerie of gadgets and weaponry to perform their despicably violent deeds while the world watches in fear.
Sky Sharks started off ridiculous but soon developed a tone that had me believing I could have fun with this over-the-top fest of violence, gratuitous nudity, sharks with attached jet engines along with all other bits of nonsense that speckled the film’s script. About 20 minutes in, however, the downward spiral happened and never got me back. Once the rest of the world starts planning how they’re going to handle the sharks and their Nazi pilots, the movie bogs itself down in horrendous cinematography, shoddy acting (surprise) and a story that remains stagnant for well over an hour from that point on. Did I mention the abrupt transitions from scene to scene? Seamless this movie is not.
Video
Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080-p
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 widescreen
There is really nothing that leaps off the page here. A lot of the imagery on screen is computer generated at budget prices and, as a result, is not so vibrant in a palette sense. There is a lacking of popping color and depth of black. That rich, abyssal black color I was looking for was not to be found here. There was one scene in particular where these purposefully inserted orbs of light enter the frame. They are significant in size, and as a result, hamper visual quality without adding any kind of specific mood, if that was even the intent to begin with. It was distracting at the very least and headache-inducing at the most.
It is important to keep in mind that this is not a big Hollywood production, so the lacking visual quality isn’t a huge drawback to the overall quality of the disc. Nevertheless, in rating fairness, the video here is quite a distance from being reference quality.
Audio
Audio Format: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English
Despite the segments of action, nothing really appetizing for the ear comes across here in the audio delivery. Some moments that could have benefited audibly from an intense moment instead fell flat. As is standard, dialogue is presented through the front channels but that rear channel activity sounds more noisy than it does engaging. It’s not horrible, but it’s not spectacular either.
Extras 
Unfortunately, the only extras to be found here are a handful of trailers from some of Cape Light Studio’s other films. That’s it. That’s all you get. After surviving the film itself though, I’m not sure I wanted to spend any more time on this disc.
Overall
Well, this was a beast of a movie to get through, and that is meant both in a literal sense of the attacking sky sharks as well as how much of a trial it was to make it to the end without ejecting the disc. Who would have thought an hour and 46 minutes could feel like double that length? Nevertheless, this is a title that has a place in the libraries of some cinemaphiles out there. It’s a below average film that could have produced some ridiculous enjoyment had the middle of it not laid an egg and lost this viewer’s attention from that point on. Filled with trivial dialogue that introduces useless characters and does nothing to contribute to the story, there is a large chunk of Sky Sharks that a real great white needs to take a bite out of. When it comes to grading this Blu-ray, it earns a hard ‘F’.
