Shark Side of the Moon

"Why are there sharks on the moon?"

You know, sometimes you don't even need to watch a trailer or see a movie poster to know the quality of the movie that you're about to subject yourself to. Sometimes the movie's title is more than enough.

Now, please note that this is absolutely not the Nat Geo documentary that also came out in 2022 about hammerhead sharks. That is a passable documentary about how hammerheads use the moon to help them navigate the ocean.

This is something very, very different.

This is about shark-human hybrids with large chests and fat asses. Russian shark-human hybrids. Well, USSR technically but only because they were created during the Cold War before scientists lured the rampaging hybrids into a rocket and shot them at the moon.

Also featuring a whale shark as a dog

Hold on, there's more. That's just the prologue.

Fast forward to the modern day, and American astronauts are sent to the dark side of the moon in order to carry out some repair work. Once there, they are swiftly attacked by the surviving shark-human hybrids. One of the astronauts is captured and brought to the sharks' underground city. There's also a Russian mad scientist (and his suspiciously young daughter) at war against the sharks.

Why, yes, this is indeed an Asylum film! How did you know?

It's a Tubi Original Asylum film, which I honestly don't know if that makes it better or worse than a SyFy Original Asylum film. SyFy got a little soulless in the last decade or so. Tubi might still hold the heart of what a movie with this title truly deserves. What I do know is that this movie is an absolutely bonkers fever dream.

I do think that the hybrid aspect of it all is what makes it so unique. The CGI for them is about as good as can be expected. It's not good by any means. I never once think that there's an actual creature on screen. But it's perfectly within expectations for the kind of movie this is.

The same goes for the acting. It's all at the Asylum movie standard: equal parts over dramatic and unenthused depending on the scene. The accents were definitely dramatic. I would want nothing else. Cheesy Russian villains deserve dramatic Russian accents.

It's the only part of the movie that holds any kind of logic. It's in very scarce supply elsewhere.

No one wears an even remotely functional spacesuit. There's open skin everywhere. Do you know the temperature of the dark side of the moon? It actually varies a lot, but it's almost never a temperature that would be safe for human skin!

Also, the shark hybrids can breathe in space. And "swim" through the lunar surface. And have a leader named Tzarina. Do I really need to go on about just how ridiculous this movie gets?

It is a fun kind of ridiculous, though. There's a trainwreck quality to it all that makes it impossible to look away from. If that's appealing to you, then I really don't know if you could find anything better. If not, then I'm glad that I at least got to inform you of just how weird this genre can be.

Random Thoughts

While doing my customary Fun Fact/Random Thoughts research, I found the movie's social media account. The little blurb was "A real movie. Really. We're on Tubi whether you like it or not."

Yes, I did specifically review this movie on the anniversary of the moon landing. Why not?

I still can't get over that they gave the lady sharks bras.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally watches far too many shark movies.

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