Bermuda Tentacles (2014)

By this point, everyone and their brother knows about The Asylum.  This is a movie studio that produces many low-quality movies that either go to the SyFy channel (Space here in Canada), or direct-to-video.  Most of these movies are rip-offs of popular films at the time of their release.  The Asylum is also a big name in animal/monster attack movies.  People know about their movies thanks to the exposure of Sharknado.  I’m not here to write about Sharknado.  Instead, I am taking a look at another movie from The Asylum that has another crazy idea and another cast of people whose careers were bigger in decades past.  That movie would be Bermuda Tentacles.

Bermuda Tentacles is a 2014 movie with a wacky name that gives the basic idea for the movie.  After Air Force One goes down in the Bermuda Triangle, a group of military personnel are sent to retrieve their leader.  Among the group is rebellious Chief Trip Oliver (Trevor Donovan), the leader of an elite squad of soldiers.  He shows disrespect for his superiors, one of which is Admiral Linda Hansen (Linda Hamilton).  Rounding out the ragtag group of military people are Dr. Zimmer (Jamie Kennedy) and Lt. Plumber (Mya).  The group encounters mysterious tentacles while in the Bermuda Triangle.  The tentacles attack them, putting their mission in jeopardy.

As with many other movies of this nature, Bermuda Tentacles is much more focused on attempting to be extremely dumb fun than actually being a great movie.  It falls into many of the major tropes with this kind of movie.  The main character refuses to listen to his superiors and instead does things the way he wants to.  In the end, he is successful and the superior gives him a pat on the back.  The superior is a hard-ass who has a history with the main character’s rebellious ways.  The doctor is interchangeable with a scientist.  The black guy dies first.  Everyone that isn’t one of the main four is expendable.  The whole movie is predictable and filled with things that you’ve probably seen before.

That doesn’t make it any less entertaining.  In fact, the tropes only help to make the movie better.  The movie is completely ridiculous and the inclusion of each trope helps to only further how wacky it is.  It takes the crazy elements of the action movies that it is trying to emulate, and wraps them in the Asylum style to make something that exceeds the quality of most movies that attempt to capture the qualities of big budget Hollywood action films.  They aren’t as polished as some of the movies but they use the tropes to create something that only The Asylum could produce.

I don’t mean to insinuate that Bermuda Tentacles is a great movie, though.  It does have some major setbacks.  The acting is serviceable but nothing really stands out.  The characters could have been played by anyone and still ended up with the same results.  The effects in the movie, though better than many of the studio’s previous efforts, still aren’t anything special.  If I weren’t so familiar with the studio, I might find them offputting.  And the story, though playing with the tropes better than many other movies, still doesn’t become an outright stellar movie.  It’s still a dumb, fun action movie.  The key word in that being dumb.  The tropes, entertaining as they are, make the movie dumb and predictable in every way.  Not a single thing in the movie feels original.  It feels like an amalgamation of all of the dumbest moments in action film.  The rebel military guy is reminiscent of the cop movies of the 80s where the officer was off the force and solved the crime on his own terms.  The finale feels very much lifted from Independence Day with slight alterations.  And then there’s Linda Hamilton, one of the stars of the Terminator franchise.  It feels like a throwback to the action films of the 80s without actually bringing anything new to them.

The whole movie feels like something that has been tread over many times before.  The difference is that it is done with the Asylum sensibilities.  That’s not a new thing, since the studio has been doing that for years now.  But it’s still something different from the throwbacks that the action stars of decades past seem to be doing in their own more recent efforts.  That is worth something.  It’s a different point of view when looking back at the action genre.

Bermuda Tentacles is not a must see movie.  In no way am I going to demand that you go out of your way to see it.  It’s perfectly enjoyable, though, and if you have nothing better to do one night, you could turn it on and have a good time for an hour and a half.  I think you could have a good time for an hour and a half.  I’m sure most of you know my taste by now, and my taste might not completely mix with your taste.  Take what I say with a little grain of salt.  I think you could do a whole lot worse than Bermuda Tentacles.

You want some notes?  I have some for you:

• Other Asylum movies that I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies are Two-Headed Shark Attack, Rise of the Zombies, Snakes on a Train, the Paranormal Entity movies, and Nazis at the Center of the Earth.
• I brought up Sharknado in the post for Big Ass Spider!
• There is an actor in Bermuda Tentacles named Richard Whiten.  He was also in a movie called Jack Frost.
• Angelique Cinelu was in Bermuda Tentacles.  She was also in Rise of the Zombies.
• The director of Bermuda Tentacles was Nick Lyon, who also directed Rise of the Zombies.
• Have you seen Bermuda Tentacles?  What did you think of it?  Put your thoughts into the comments below.
• Also in the comments, you can leave recommendations of movies I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  If not there, then you can find me on Twitter.