Only the Good: Sharknado

A masterpiece so bad, its Oscar worthy

Our rating system: 1)Don’t waste your time not worth it. 2) Entertaining but hardly art. 3) Good not great. 4) Excellent worth discussing. 5) Masterpiece/Instant Classic

Zeb’s Purely Ironic Rating: 5/5

Sharknado - The Citizen Kane of Weather Based Shark Warfare

Released in 2013 with all the grace of a lawn chair being thrown through a window, Sharknado arrived at a critical moment in cinematic history. Superhero fatigue was beginning to creep in. Prestige television had become self-important. Audiences were drowning in grimdark reboots and emotionally unavailable protagonists staring into the middle distance.

What the people needed was simple:

Sharks.

In the sky.

Eating people and shit.

The Plot: Humanity vs. Nature vs. A Flying Great White

To summarize the plot would be an insult to the art form itself, but I will try.

A massive tornado strikes Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the tornado also contains sharks. Not metaphorical sharks. Not emotional sharks representing trauma or capitalism or postmodern alienation.

Actual sharks. Flying through the air.

Attacking people with the unearned confidence of WWE wrestlers entering the Royal Rumble. (I love WWE)

Our hero, Fin Shepard (yes, that is his real name), fights back with the emotional depth of a propane grill manual. Armed with chainsaws, grit, and what I can only describe as “divorced dad, grunge rock energy,” he battles the storm alongside a cast of characters who all seem vaguely aware they are trapped inside a collective fever dream.

Cinema.

The Cast

These films are single-handedly keeping B-list actors alive. You’re telling me Tara Reid and Gary Busey had nothing better to do? Yes. The cast of these films performs like someone has a gun against their head and is ready to shoot if they don’t secure an Academy Award.

I would also be remiss if I did not address the absolute queen in the room. Yes, what you are reading below is correct. One of the greatest names to ever grace the silver screen joining the final installment of this film continues the fever dream that is the Sharknado universe. Alaska Thunderfuck you are my new idol.

Then there is our hero, Ian Ziering, who treats every film like an audition for Macbeth. There is no off switch on the dead seriousness he takes into these films. To him, this isn’t a job or a film, this is real life.

And he’ll be damned if he lets a shark eat his friends

A Masterclass in Theoretical Physics

Critics often claim the film is “unrealistic.” Fuck you Neil de Grasse Tyson. Your criticism misses the point entirely.

Sharknado is not concerned with so-called “realism”. It transcends it. It asks a far more important question, a question every five year boy has had:

“What if sharks were in a tornado?”

Until now, that question remained unanswered.

The film refuses to be dragged down by ridiculous scientific limitations. Gravity? Optional. Meteorology? Cowardly. Shark behavior? Flexible. Human behavior? Irrational.

At one point, a shark launches through the air with the precision of a Tomahawk missile and attacks a person indoors. This is not a plot hole. This is visual poetry. This is the nuclear fusion of cinema. Can we explain it? No. Is it awesome? Yes.

Michael Bay wishes he had this kind of courage.

How Good is too Good?

Sometimes in the ethereal art of movie reviewing you have no idea if what you’re seeing is bad or good until others start to cheer around you. Kind of like if you’re into smut and a complete deviation from the source material then you liked the new Wuthering Heights. Or perhaps if you are a Michael Bay fan but not a fan of Sharknado I would have to ask why? Is Transformers a documentary to you?

“Oh I’m more elite in my taste, I only like when cars come to life and beat the shit out of other cars.”

In the case of this movie, apparently the cheering was loud enough to warrant not one, not two… but FIVE more installments.

Is this film for real?

You might be wondering, does this film truly offer any value to cinema? The answer, unequivocally yes. What you may see as cheap entertainment is actually a positive sign. Hollywood is swamped in movies that have their head so far up their own ass that they forget the value of a good “bad” movie. Sometimes the people want fun without thinking. They don’t want to have to address deeper themes or hear a lecture on current events. The people want giant fucking sharks flying through the sky.

The CGI Looks Like It Was Rendered on a Toaster - That’s Why It Rules

Modern blockbusters are obsessed with photorealism. Every explosion must look real. Every monster must contain individual skin pores and ray-traced saliva. And what is the result? We get films like the newest Lion King that start to trigger our Uncanny Valley response.

Sharknado rejects this cowardice.

The CGI sharks move through the air with the majestic stiffness of early PlayStation videogames. Their physics resemble what would happen if a JPEG and a 2000s era GIF had a child that became sentient.

The bad effects become part of the film’s strange hypnotic charm. Watching Sharknado feels less like consuming media and more like witnessing a public-access prophecy accidentally broadcast from another dimension. What we see is the visual equivalent to abstract art.

Final Verdict

Is Sharknado “good”?

That depends entirely on whether you believe art should make you feel alive.

Because every single installment of Sharknado does.

It grabs you by the throat, throws any kind of narrative structure into a blender, and screams:
“WHAT IF A HURRICANE HAD SHARKS IN IT?”

To which I say: That’s more creative ambition than half of what’s streaming in 2026.