When Sharks Fly, Logic Dies
Let’s begin with a confession: I did not expect Sharknado 5: Global Swarming to be good. I did, however, expect it to be fun. I thought maybe, just maybe, it would deliver the same cheap-thrill, drunk-at-2-a.m. joy that comes from watching sharks whip through the air while Ian Ziering yells about weather patterns. Instead, what I got was a film so bloated, incoherent, and self-aware that it looped back around to being self-destructive.
This isn’t a movie. It’s a fever dream filmed during a global hangover. It’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dumb, written by someone who once skimmed a Wikipedia article about meteorology while chain-watching Baywatch Nights.
By the time the credits rolled, I wasn’t sure if I’d watched a sci-fi disaster movie or a hostage situation.
Plot: Sharknado, Now with Frequent Flyer Miles
The premise, if you can call it that, begins with Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering) and his part-cyborg wife April (Tara Reid, whose performance could be described as “involuntarily present”) traveling to London with their son Gil. London, of course, is about to be attacked by — you guessed it — another sharknado. But this isn’t your garden-variety shark-filled weather event. No, this one contains portals. Yes, the sharks can now teleport. Because at this point, the writers are clearly playing narrative Mad Libs with a bucket of tequila.
The opening sequence has Fin rallying the Queen’s Guard to fight flying sharks with bayonets. You might think that sounds hilarious — and it should be — but it’s shot with all the comic timing of a colonoscopy. The sharks look less like CGI monsters and more like stock footage of marine life copy-pasted by a hungover intern.
When their son gets swept up in a sharknado vortex, Fin and April travel the globe to save him, jumping from one portal to another like this is Shark Trek: The Motionless Picture. Along the way, they stop in places like Sydney, Rio, Rome, Tokyo, and Egypt — each one portrayed with the cultural authenticity of a bad postcard and the budget of a regional weather report.
Somehow, there’s a secret cult called the “Sharknado Sisterhood,” led by Nova (Cassie Scerbo), who delivers lines about ancient shark gods as if she’s ordering sushi. There’s also a nuclear shark mass called “Sharkzilla,” which sounds like a rejected Pokémon. Eventually, the film ends with the entire planet destroyed, April sacrificing herself, and an older version of their son (played by Dolph Lundgren, because sure, why not?) arriving in a time-traveling truck.
If you just read that paragraph and thought, that makes no sense, congratulations — you’re paying attention, which already makes you smarter than the script.
Characters: Emotionally Dead, Occasionally Eaten
Let’s start with Fin Shepard, the world’s unluckiest surfer turned chainsaw-wielding weatherman-hero. Ian Ziering plays him with the permanent expression of a man who just realized he left his dignity in 2013. He’s supposed to be stoic and brave, but he mostly looks confused — like he’s trying to remember if his SAG card covers trauma.
Tara Reid, as April, is now part human, part robot, and entirely unbothered by continuity. She delivers her lines in the same tone one might use to order a sandwich, which gives the film an eerie, deadpan energy — like if HAL-9000 starred in a soap opera.
Dolph Lundgren appears briefly at the end as an older Gil Shepard, popping out of a time vortex like a gym membership ad with daddy issues. He’s there for approximately three minutes, but his presence feels like a spiritual summary of the entire franchise: unnecessary, confusing, and somehow shirtless.
Nova, the “sharknado hunter,” is back with an organization so secret they apparently advertise on LinkedIn. Cassie Scerbo plays her as a mix of Lara Croft and a vape shop employee. The Sisterhood of the Sharknado — yes, that’s the actual name — has the kind of feminist energy that could only come from a screenplay written by men who think feminism means “giving her a rocket launcher.”
And the cameos. Oh, the cameos. Fabio as the Pope. Charo as the Queen of England. Bret Michaels as himself, because even a global shark apocalypse can’t kill ’80s hair metal. Every five minutes, another celebrity pops up, waves at the camera, and dies — a grim metaphor for Hollywood’s current state of affairs.
Tone: Sharknado Has Jumped the Sharknado
By Sharknado 5, the franchise has officially eaten itself. What started as a self-aware, tongue-in-cheek parody of B-movie absurdity has become a joyless exercise in self-reference. It’s like watching someone laugh at their own joke for five straight years.
The film tries desperately to outdo its predecessors with bigger stakes and more outlandish set pieces — sharknados over the Vatican, sharknados powered by nuclear waste, sharknados in outer space — but the magic is gone. The irony has fossilized. What was once “so bad it’s good” is now just “so bad it’s exhausting.”
Even the dialogue feels like it was written by ChatGPT after being electrocuted. Lines like “The Earth has many portals!” and “We’re gonna need a bigger Vatican!” land with all the dramatic weight of a dropped fish.
Visuals: CGI That Couldn’t Fool a Goldfish
The effects are, in a word, offensive. The sharks look like clip art that escaped from PowerPoint. The tornadoes have the texture of lukewarm oatmeal. At one point, a shark bites through the Colosseum — a moment that should be glorious — and it looks like someone animated it on a potato.
There’s an almost admirable level of apathy in the filmmaking. The green screen is so poorly keyed that characters appear to be hovering two inches above the ground. The lighting never matches, the explosions look like video game cutscenes from 2002, and at least one shark seems to forget which way gravity works.
If SyFy’s goal was to make The Room of disaster movies, congratulations — they’ve achieved it five times over.
Writing: From Dumb Fun to Dumb Dumb
There’s a fine art to making a “bad” movie intentionally. You have to lean into absurdity with confidence, not contempt. Sharknado 5 mistakes volume for humor and nonsense for wit.
The film’s jokes are endless but never land. Every cultural reference feels like it was written by someone who heard of Twitter once but didn’t care for it. Even the running gags about chainsaws and sharknado science feel tired — the cinematic equivalent of a dad repeating the same pun for the fifth Christmas in a row.
And then there’s the pseudo-mythology. Ancient shark gods? Stonehenge portals? A time-travel subplot? It’s as if the writers kept daring each other to make it dumber, and nobody had the courage to say “stop.”
Direction: A Global Disaster in Every Sense
Anthony C. Ferrante returns to direct his fifth Sharknado, proving once and for all that you can’t kill what’s already dead inside. His direction is pure chaos — scenes stitched together with all the continuity of a fever dream.
The editing feels like it was done by a caffeinated piranha. One second we’re in London, the next we’re in Tokyo, and then suddenly we’re in the Vatican because someone remembered they had stock footage of Rome. There’s no rhythm, no structure, and no mercy.
Ferrante directs like a man trapped in his own franchise, forced to watch it devour itself one low-budget explosion at a time.
Final Thoughts: Global Swarming, Local Suffering
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming isn’t just bad — it’s a cinematic endurance test. It’s a movie that dares you to find joy in its chaos, only to replace that joy with existential dread.
If the sharknados are a metaphor for anything, it’s the endless cycle of sequels devouring Hollywood from the inside. The first Sharknado was a delightful accident. By the fifth, it’s less “camp masterpiece” and more “cry for help.”
By the end, as the world is destroyed and Fin wanders a barren Earth carrying his wife’s disembodied robot head, you’ll find yourself thinking: “Yes. This is what I deserve for watching all five of these.”
Final Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
(One out of five flying sharks — because even extinction deserves better special effects.)
