Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast (2011 Video) User Reviews

Not the worst movie I've ever seen.

[dailyplanetdude · 1/10 · 2 March 2013]

Okay, this isn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but really had to force myself to watch the entire thing. I lost interest two minutes into the movie.

Dialogue- stilted, off putting, uninteresting and flat. Characters- no real depth, these characters weren't even two dimensional, they were inverted. No on screen chemistry, talent or engaging characters to relate to. No one to cheer far.

Cinematography- Horrible, the color saturation was horrid. It's as if it was shot from a cell phone. Actually, I've got to correct myself, i've seen better movies that were shot from an iPhone.

This was just horrible all across the board. Acting, dialogue, characters, story, plot, execution/delivery of the story, no character arcs, nothing interesting.

I actually enjoyed cute cat videos on youtube more than this.

I imagine it was shot with a couple of friends, a couple of dollars and only a couple of hours, including the editing, retakes, and everyone's shooting schedule.

what a piece of crap.

Time for a nap

[Harlow_WU · 1/10 · 11 March 2013]

Wow! Just wow! I've seen scarier sharks inside sock puppets.

As far as bad acting skills go this is up there with the worst porn.

I once thought that Zombie Nation was the worst film I had ever seen but this makes that look like cinema gold.

Me and my friends love a bad movie, they are great for a laugh, but this film is just beyond that, darlin'. Bad, I'm mean really bad, acting, bad direction, bad editing, bad script, bad hairstyles and facial hair that randomly change and no point commenting about the effects. I'm pretty sure this was filmed in someone's backyard.

So, if you have trouble sleeping, watch this. You'll fall asleep in no time.

Btw, did I mention how BAD the acting was!!!!

Very hard to watch.

[blizzard_satanic · 1/10 · 13 August 2013]

I'm trying to find anything positive in this movie but they've done a very good work at making it awful.

The acting of every single actor is bad, and not in the way you can enjoy by having fun of them, they are just boring.

The attacks of the snow shark are just horrible. Most of them are just the victim screaming and a blood stain in the snow, but the thing goes worse when they show the shark briefly and you discover that is a puppet.

I was hoping to see at least lots of blood and guts but don't count of it, there is a few blood in every attack but nothing remarkable.

If you really want to see a snow shark then I guess this is your movie but don't expect too much.

AVOID...One of the worst films ever made

[nathanjamesemerson · 1/10 · 24 September 2018]

I love shark movies. Even the cheap low budget shark movies. But this movie is an absolute abomination.

I took great pleasure in throwing the DVD of this over my front balcony. And I took even greater pleasure reversing back and forwards over the disc in my car on the driveway. And then to top of off, I burnt it. What's even more funny is that I barely watched 20 minutes of it.

Every copy of this film around the Earth should be handed in to the nearest authorities to be sent to NASA so they can rocket all the copies into space.

This movie is THAT bad. If anyone tells you this movie is good, then they are LYING to you. And most likely, they don't like you if they recommend this.

Please avoid this movie at all cost. I honestly hope everyone involved in this film has never been in front or behind a camera again

If I could rate this movie -0 out of 10, I would have. Pure garbage in a movie form

Even for a low-budget shark movie, no matter how hard it tried, this was embarrassingly bad

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 7 September 2014]

It is a very daunting task taking on more than one skill working on a movie, with Sam Qualiana writing, starring, shooting and directing. Sometimes that can work, on other occasions it doesn't, sadly Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Shark falls into the latter. It does try but everything just looked and felt like it was made in one big rush.

The movie does look awful, it has a very drab and crude colour palette and it looks like it was shot on an unsteady hand-held mobile phone the entire time. Even worse was the special effects on the shark, to say that its crude puppet-like look looks fake is an insult to the word fake. The music throughout is one constant overly-loud and monotonous drone, while the worst of the repetitive and weakly structured script is horrendously stilted and the story- doing nothing with a done to death premise- felt very padded out and thin. Apparently according to one external review Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast was initially intended as a short film and it really does show in the execution of the story here. There's nothing interesting or likable about the characters, they are little more than stock cardboard cut-outs who do little and when they do something it comes across as annoying and predictable. The shark is no better, outside of how bad it looks it also exudes no personality or menace and the non-existent way the characters and actors react to their predicaments hinders it further. We know next to nothing about it either or its origins- despite executing it badly at least Avalanche Sharks tried to do that- and never once did it feel like it was a proper threat and we all knows that sharks are scary.

Regarding the shark attacks, they are completely devoid of suspense and terror with in almost all of them the shark only shown briefly(and it's in the attacks actually when the shark looks the most like a puppet). Pretty much all you can see is the sprayed tomato-ketchup-like blood cheapened even more by the seizure-inducing camera work. A further reason why Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast is for me down there as among the worst shark movies is that you get no entertainment value from it whatsoever, shark movies like Sharktopus and Sharknado had novelty value and while far from great movies(guilty pleasures more like) they had a sense of goofy fun, know what tone to take and even poked fun at themselves with everyone playing along. But Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast didn't have that, I know you should not expect much from low-budget movies like this and not take things so seriously but it's difficult to do that when the movie itself makes the mistake of taking it too seriously.

With Sam Qualiana's direction, he is to be admired for his ambition but his direction did feel very mundane and erratic, a good idea in the future(as a suggestion this is) is to take on less because it did feel like Qualiana was trying to take on too many things and had yet to have the experience to do so properly. The acting is very weak from everybody involved; they just looked bored and un-rehearsed. Especially bad are Andy Taylor who is incredibly irritating and CJ Qualiana who already has a morose character and plays him in a constantly one-note way. If there were any redeeming values they were the lovely scenery, which we would appreciate even more if the photography was better than it was, and the reasonably good sound quality. Other than that, overall Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast tries hard but its execution is embarrassingly bad. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Five for Trying

[arfdawg-1 · 5/10 · 26 January 2014]

12 years ago during a scientific expedition 3 animal biologists stumbled upon a great discovery that ended in tragedy.

Whatever killed them has awoken and now the legend of the Ancient Snow Beast could prove to be more than just a legend.

Well we know from like frame one what killed them cuz we see it.

I', surprised at reviews that say this is the worst movie ever. No way. Is it good? We that's relative. Low budget means it's not gonna be great. But it's really sort of funny and watchable.

And I don't think it's meant to be taken seriously. Plus, I've seen far worse acting in these kinds of movies.

It won't change your life, but it's watchable. And you will get a few laffs throughout.

"'Cause only a woman can take everything a man has, and still want more."

[Hey_Sweden · 5/10 · 21 December 2018]

There's just no end to the goofy possibilities in the "cheap and cheesy monster movie" genre. Here we have a finned predator that burrows through the snowy ground of New York State, popping up time and time again to turn various moron victims into Snow Shark chow. Among those who determine to destroy the beast: a knuckle-headed, macho local (played by writer / director / cinematographer Sam Qualiana), a team including two scientists and a boorish Great White Hunter, and a Sheriff (played by Sam Q.s' father, C.J. Qualiana) who has a personal stake in the mission.

"Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast" gives you exactly what you expect from this genre: a silly script with various attempts at clever lines, inane characters & amateurish performances, and utterly laughable special effects. (Still, I give Qualiana credit: he uses a puppet head for the Snow Shark, keeping digital nonsense to a minimum.) The wintry atmosphere does help matters a fair bit. The quality of the pacing is fine - this clocks in at a reasonable 80 minutes. (Although, some people would argue that it's still 80 minutes too long.)

Qualiana Sr. delivers the closest thing that this picture has in terms of a decent performance; he looks very serious throughout. That said, Qualiana Jr. is a hoot as a stereotypical redneck, and Andy Taylor is likewise amusing as the amiable dope who keeps ribbing his female cohort.

Perked up somewhat by its hilarious (if not that original) ending.

One good thing: this viewer did enjoy that closing credits tune, "She's Gonna Eat You Alive".

Producer / unit production manager Gregory Lamberson (director of "Slime City") has an unbilled cameo at around the one hour mark; one of the editors is veteran D.I.Y. filmmaker Mark Polonia.

Five out of 10.

A Very Low Quality Shark Movie

[MoviesFromTheClergy · 3/10 · 25 October 2017]

This must've been the 3rd or 4th time I have seen this movie. I put this on at random to kill a bit of time. I thought 'hey, it's only 1hr 19mins, it's short and sweet'.

Yes, it is a short run time and things did zip by pretty quick. But I couldn't help but pick out and notice all the little bits of detail that makes this movie's quality low. As a fan of bad movies, I like discovering errors I didn't pick up from the first few times watching.

Here, all I noticed was the audio. The static feedback in some of the actor's dialogue is noticeable. Then there was the sound they used for the shark which sounded like a distorted man's scream. I wasn't sure if they used that for the shark or the victim it caught but it got annoying when they kept reusing it numerous times. AND I KID YOU NOT!! At one point in the movie, they used elephant noises for the shark..... ELEPHANT NOISES!!! Did they not think when seeing the final cut that using that audio was not a good idea to use for shark roars? Unless one idiot thought "elephant noises sound pretty evil, let's use that!"

Terrible, and Flat!

[icocleric · 1/10 · 2 February 2024]

As a shark film lover I was deeply disappointed with this film and how boring it turned out to. I thought a film as dumb as the idea of a snow shark would have been a lot more fun.

But I hoped for really funny kills, but no. Just screaming them blood stains on the snow. The acting was so flat, and awkward. None of the actors sold this film to you, and the digalog was honestly terrible. Like how could you not have fun and give it your all with a concept like this?

The shark had the deepest range of acting, and it's not even real.

I don't know how a film this short managed to out stay it's welcome, but here we are.

Ugh!

[dana_anderson-21173 · 1/10 · 20 December 2023]

I adore B-grade shark movies, but this doesn't even come close to qualifying as B-grade. While not the absolute worst shark movie I have ever seen (that distinction goes to House Shark), it was pretty close.

The film's speed was off - more 'daytime soap' than 'movie', the dialogue was dreadful, and the lead actor's acting was atrocious. Surprisingly, and the acting of some of the support actors was actually passable.

After the first two minutes it was pretty easy to guess... I bet this is one of those where the writer, director, producer, and 'star' are all the same person. Yup. And half the cast are family. The rest are probably friends, girlfriends, or old college roommates.

Making this movie was probably a fun way for a bored group of family and friends to fill in some time, but the same certainly can't be said for watching it. If you really need something to fill in your time, try banging your head against a wall - it will probably be less painful than watching this.

An entertaining piece of low-grade nickel'n'dime schlock

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 1 November 2013]

A prehistoric shark of local legend begins eating the locals in a quiet wintry small town. Mike Evans (essayed with hammy brio by writer/director Sam Qualinana), the sole survivor of a past snow shark attack, leads an angry and armed posse who are determined to slay the beast. Writer/director Qualiana treats the gloriously ludicrous premise in a sidesplitting mock serious manner: The abundant cheesy gore (the CGI blood in particular is quite tacky), a hilariously obvious shark puppet, poky pacing, the monotonous hum'n'shiver synthesizer score, lousy (markedly less than) special effects, cardboard stock characters, a decent smattering of tasty gratuitous distaff nudity, crude cinematography, and the meandering narrative all give this exquisitely abominable baby a certain chintzy hokey charm that's impossible to either resist or dislike. The endearingly awful acting by the lame no-name cast further adds to this picture's considerable kitschy appeal, with stand-out stinky work by Michael O'Hear as the no-nonsense Prof. Jonathan Hoffman, Jackey Hall as the feisty Daphne, C.J. Qualiana as the morose Sheriff Donald Chapman, Kathy Murphy as the tart Wendy, Andrew Elias as nerdy cryptozoologist Lincoln Anderson, Andy Taylor as obnoxious macho redneck hunter Cameron Caine, and Robert Bozak as the jerky Mayor Shawn Overman. A complete crummy hoot.