Creatures of War #21: Sky Sharks (2020)

Flying sharks, swimming planes

What’s new?

I haven’t been to the movies recently so no new releases to report on. This would normally be my time to buckle down and watch all the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars, but I’m becoming increasingly disillusioned with award shows. In the past I have enjoyed most (if not all) of the nominees I catch, but this year I’ve disliked more than I've liked. Also, what’s with all the limited releases? I don’t want to pay $20 two days before the big night to rent a movie that never showed within a 200-mile radius of me. I almost went to see The Brutalist last weekend, but I would have missed the last bus back home due to its length and the showtimes. As a car-less woman in an Uber-less city, missing the bus means walking 3 miles in the cold. It’s starting to snow and I’m not willing to slip in the middle of an intersection while people judge, all to see a movie I’m not even looking forward to. Oscar rant over, let’s get into the trashy movies already.

Review

Picture from IMDb. Look at the missiles under the shark fins, I was ROBBED of such a vision in the actual movie

Picture this: sharks. Sharks that fly. Sharks that fly with zombies. Zombie-Nazis. Flying sharks piloted by Nazi-Zombies. Under the incredibly inventive name Sky Sharks, that is what this 2020 German horror/comedy is about.

Pause. That is not what Sky Sharks is about. It’s about Frankenstein-Pacific-Rim-like military super-soldiers, strained family dynamics, corporate greed, a strange rich European man, sacrificing a plane full of innocents, and boobs. Objectively, Sky Sharks should be fun and I should have laughed at its ridiculousness, but somehow it managed to bore me. I had no idea what was happening at any given moment and the runtime could have easily been 30 minutes or 3 hours. I couldn’t find the official budget for Sky Sharks, but it was too high. The whole movie looked like a glossy commercial. I missed a good chunk after the opening scene because I muted my TV thinking I was watching a pharmaceutical ad. Speaking of ads, with some misguided attempts at world-building, there are fake ads scattered throughout the movie. These did not add to my enjoyment or understanding, only my bewilderment. Sky Sharks is a shiny shell of filth that made me nothing but nauseous. I’ve seen plenty of trashy Nazi-Zombie movies, but Sky Sharks lacks any sense of heart or joy. It should be ridiculous, it should be silly, but there is a coldness about Sky Sharks that I had a hard time shaking. It’s not just that I found it unfunny and try-hard, it felt completely disingenuous and inhuman. If you told me an AI made this, I’d believe you. Even stupid and bad movies can be made with some level of love and care, that's basically what my whole substack is about, but Shy Sharks feels like someone’s shitty cash grab.

There is an endless bounty of bad shark movies out in the ether, yet Sky Sharks still falls to the bottom of the pit. The Polonia brothers¹ are known for their career of making almost no-budget shark movies. They look and sound horrible, but you can tell they are made with some passion. Mark Polonia is committed to the bit. The director of Sky Sharks is not struggling to make his film like Polonia, he’s got some cash and could even afford some recognizable faces like Tony Todd and Amanda Bearse. There is a certain charm and appreciation that comes from seeing a low-budget movie do everything in its power to accomplish a vision. Sky Sharks is not just a terrible movie, it’s effortlessly terrible. No one put their blood, sweat, and tears of joy into this. I doubt the creators even found it fun. I wanted to write a light-hearted review about a shitty shark movie but unfortunately, Sky Sharks is not a shitty shark movie, it’s just heartless shit.

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Crashes and Conspiracies

Wreckage of Bering Air from CNN

I have no eloquent segway from flying Nazi-Zombie sharks into this serious topic, but I’m gonna briefly talk about the recent plane crashes in the US. There’s a 2023 article that I’ve been bringing up to people for years about near-misses in aviation. That NYT piece is behind a paywall, but I had the pleasure of attending a talk of the woman who put together the graphic they used to explain the incident. The idea of a close-call like that becoming a disaster has plagued me ever since, even with the knowledge that close-call collisions decreased in 2024. When I saw the news of the collision, I was reminded of that article and wondered if anyone else made the connection. I made the mistake of opening Twitter.² DEI was trending while 67 people were submerged in an icy river.

The small jet that crashed into a populated area in Philidelphia was a terrible coincidence. It’s not part of some larger conspiracy, and it was not an attack on the US. It was a horrible, heartbreaking accident. I saw the public response to the DCA crash, saw the Philideplia jet was a Mexican air ambulance, and braced myself for impact. I feared people would use this as an excuse to further prosecute non-white people in the States. They’ll say this was intentional and these crashes are part of some evil plan. Last night we had our 3rd fatal aviation disaster in the States this year when a plane went down in Alaska. Conspiracies of the end of the world, DEI again. Is the truth not horrible enough? I understand trying to make sense of a disaster, but these people don’t actually want to help the investigation, they want to push agendas and madness. When you feel hopeless and there isn’t anything you can do, the most you can offer is your sorrow. Keep your hate and fear to yourself.

Flying is safe, but it’s only as safe as the regulations are. The aftermath of the DCA crash can change the industry for the better, but I’m worried our current administration will use it as an excuse to gut what’s already there. I can only hope our country’s leader will dispel his supporters’ harmful rhetoric, but I’m probably more likely to look out the window on my next flight and see a Nazi-Zombie shark.³ I cannot blame the Trump administration for bringing down these aircraft. I can, and will, blame him for his response.

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Until next time

Don’t watch Sky Sharks. Here are some shitty shark movies you can watch instead:

• Sharktopus (2010) - Shark. Octopus. Sharktopus

• Shark Encounters of the Third Kind (2020) - insane

• Sharks of the Corn (2021) - Probably made during the pandemic, people risked their lives for such a film

  

1. RIP

2. I need to delete Twitter it only brings me anger. Never calling it X

3. I’m already afraid of flying so Amtrak, here I come. That said, it’s important to stress that flying is still very safe and will likely only get safer.