Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015)

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! is the third installment in a franchise that abandoned any pretense of cinema somewhere around the second one and settled into the comfortable business of being a running joke about itself. Syfy and The Asylum built a cottage industry on the premise that a tornado full of sharks is inherently funny, and by 2015 that premise had been dragged across Washington, D.C., the Daytona speedway, a theme park, and low Earth orbit. The film is loud, cheap, and content with its own silliness. It does not aspire to anything. It disposes of sharks in volume.

The ensemble reflects B-movie economics at work. Frankie Muniz, Michael Winslow, Bo Derek, David Hasselhoff, and Mark Cuban as the President drift through the margins, lending the production the faint sheen of celebrity without demanding much of anyone. Cassie Scerbo's Nova kills sharks with a competence the screenplay never bothers to examine, and Tara Reid's April joins the shuttle crew mostly because the finale needed another body aboard. Women act decisively throughout. The film has no interest in what that might mean, and so it means nothing beyond the next set piece.

Sharknadoes are weather, which might invite an environmental reading, but the film treats them as pure absurdist spectacle and offers no commentary on the climate or anything else. Its real ideology is product placement: the Coke Zero 400, Universal Orlando, NASA, each logo granted generous screen time. A production this committed to brand synergy will not be eating any rich people. There is no sermon here, no moment where a character turns to the camera and explains what we are meant to think. The film wants only to be ridiculous, and it succeeds. As a specimen of social consciousness it is inert. As a specimen of anything else it is also inert, which is arguably the point.

{"thematic_tags": ["sequel"]}