When a film is titled “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus“, one would expect to see two large creatures of the sea fighting one another for a good portion of the film. In this case, you can be forgiven for expecting that, because the end result isn’t anything near a big fight for 90 minutes. Instead, we get a few humans trying to figure out what is going on, only intermittently broken up so that we can see the two creatures do things.

The story goes something like this: Two gigantic sea creatures end up getting defrosted because of the melting ice caps. They cause some havoc around the world, and the humans need to figure out how to stop them from doing this. They end up deciding to have the two creatures fight one another, luring them into one location so that we can have the big fight that the title promises. Oops, I just told you what the humans decide one hour into the film.

I don’t care though, as the title more or less gave it away. The first hour of this film isn’t even really worth watching, save to see a shark jump tens of thousands of feet into the air in order to grab an airplane and drag it down to the depths. That one scene, terrible CGI and all, is the only part of the first hour that is actually worth seeing, and I’m sure you can see it on the internet somewhere.

Instead, if you decide to watch this film, fast-forward to the one hour mark, and you will see everything that actually matters. You will hear the humans’ plan to bring the two creatures together, and you will get to see them do something that somewhat resembles “fighting”. You will feel exactly the same emotional connection to the humans and the creatures, and you will get a good idea about the hour you missed out on.

And if you still don’t know what you missed, you might not be alone. You’ll get a good sense of the poor editing job within the film, seemingly done to make it as confusing as possible for the viewer. Or maybe just to cover up for the low budget, one of the two. There are often flashes on the screen, followed by more flashes that obscure most of the action. Maybe this was done to make the film feel like its events were actually sporadic, but it ends up just making the action hard to follow.

Oh, and in case you weren’t aware, this film had a really low budget, at least in terms of the CGI used for the two creatures. They look about as real as they would if they were in a PS2 game, maybe even less so. But you should have already figured out that this wasn’t going to be a masterpiece just by the title. It’s a B-movie, but it isn’t cheesy enough to warrant a watch.

Most of its problems, even for what it tries to be, come from its narrative. Overlook, for a second, its poor CGI creatures and acting, and you take a look just at the story. The humans within the film don’t matter one iota, and choosing to focus on them for the majority of the film was the worst decision of the production. Even if you do watch the first hour, you will be bored by their story, uncaring towards their characters, and possibly offended that the title of the film was as deceiving as it is.

You know what? Maybe Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus would work a lot better as a short film. Then we could forget about the humans and just watch two ferocious creatures battle it out for a few minutes. That could easily be entertaining. In fact, that’s exactly what this film should be. It should be put up on YouTube as a 12 minute short, cutting out all of the humans in order to just watch the creatures destroy things before destroying each other. And trust me, it would be a lot more enjoyable.

In short, this film is just not worth your time. Even for fans of B-movies, it will fail to entertain. There is actually only a few minutes focusing on the shark and octopus mentioned in the title; the rest if spent on humans that you won’t care about whatsoever. The battle that does take place is too short and boring to save the film, the CGI is incredibly poor and the acting is laughable. The writing and dialogue comes through terribly, while the editing makes what little action there is hard to follow. A more appropriate title would be: “Boring Humans Minus Giant Creatures Equals Boring Film”.