Aquanoids (2003) — Triskaidekafiles

AQUANOIDS

WRITERS: Mark J. Gordon and Eric Spudic

DIRECTOR: Ray Peschke

STARRING: Laura Nativo as Vanessa

Rhoda Jordan as Christina

Edwin Craig as Frank Walsh

Ike Gingrich as Clint Jefferson

Hugh Laurence Hobbs as Jackson

QUICK CUT: In the town of Babylon, the July 4th weekend gets interrupted when some old friends come to visit.

THE MORGUE

Vanessa - An environmentalist, socially conscious, and very plucky and determined.

Jackson - A family friend of Vanessa’s, who has become the town joke after seeing Aquanoids 17 years ago. He has a standing reward if anyone brings him an Aquanoid, but he drowns his mockery in booze and squinting.

Frank Walsh - Babylon’s mayor, who will do anything to keep things that might hurt tourism quiet. The only thing he cares about is the bottom line and his shopping centre.

Let's see how long it takes me to get Aquannoyed with this movie

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Hope y'all had a safe and fun July 4th holiday, and in honour of that we are taking an in depth look at a movie that takes place over the holiday, and is about a creature ravaging a beach resort town, and the struggles of the people who have seen the creature trying to shut down the beaches, and the local government not wanting to hurt the tourism trade...Aquanoids! ...What? What did you think I meant? Has that plot been done before??

Okay, yes, this movie is very much like Jaws. And even though this happened on its own and is a wild coincidence, I do wanna throw some love to my friend Bo’s podcast, Pick Six Movies, which is at this time ALSO doing a series on movies that are Like Jaws. So if you enjoy me yelling at Aquanoids, you’ll like Pick Six Movies even more.

During the credits, we get to watch a couple making out on the beach and in the surf, and some Aquanoid vision sneaking up on them.

And to make a long story short, they get killed by the creature while one of the characters we'll actually be following stands off to the side watching and doing nothing while his friends die.

We then cut 16 years into the future and see their grown up daughter Vanessa waking up to get ready for the July 4th parade, and her officer park ranger boyfriend, whom I will warn you now, I am pretty sure I get confused with every officer ranger we see from here on out.

Vanessa is a vaguely defined 'environmentalist' and she goes diving for he work down at the cove, and discovers a bunch of abalone shells. Hoo, give it 15 years and change, and they'll be boiled alive in their shells.

She sees a creature, rushes out of the water, hops on her scooter and ACTION SCOOTER MUSIC! as she rushes to find the mayor.

Vanessa starts screaming about Aquanoids, and everyone just acts like these are a known thing, and I get having existing mythology, but geeze.

She busts in on the mayor trying to plan something with his toadie Jefferson, and if you've seen Jaws, you know where this goes; just an oversized fish, Aquanoids aren't real, public tourism, etc etc.

But the mayor DOES say he'll notify Baywatch, and at least we'll have lots of Running to look forward to!

So while nothing gets done, a local surfer dude goes out, and the Aquanoid sees a tasty snack just hanging out on a handy platter.

We cut from there to Vanessa hitting one of the local bars where Sean Beef is hanging out, to tell him she saw an Aquanoid. And with how much shit he gets over being the only one who believes, I bet that stool he's sitting on has a perfect impression of his ass.

Sean Beef doesn't want Vanessa to befall the same fate of eternal mockery he's endured, so tells her to go home.

After paying a visit to her mom’s grave and vowing revenge or something, Vanessa barges in on her best friend banging her latest boy toy, to recruit her to go Aquanoid hunting.

She asks if the boy can come along, Vanessa says sure, as long as we can use him as bait, and Jake...is never seen again in this movie.

We get more swimming action montage jetski stuff as the girls get some bad photos of the angry snork, then cut to Vanessa's not boyfriend on another boat, sending a guy to go exploring underwater to see if they can find anything.

As the diver disappears under the waves, the missing surfer's corpse comes up, and the officer drags him into the boat.

Boy, the uh, the aquanoids sure don't eat a lot of their kills, huh?

The officer in the boat tries to warn the diver, but it does no good as he runs into the aquanoid as well and doesn't last very long.

Meanwhile, Vanessa and her friend are handing out signs to warn people, and the mayor and Jefferson are overseeing an autopsy of the victims.

And *snort* it is hilarious that Jefferson can't take it and throws up, AND bonus the now cliche "medical examiner eating his lunch over the corpse" is included..

The mayor says cover it up, the ME is having none of it, not again, but he gets blackmailed into playing along anyways.

Meanwhile, the local news finally shows up to the aquanoids feeding frenzy, to interview Mr. Jackson; Ronald if you're nasty.

After Jackson does his thing, he points over and says, why don't you ask the mayor!! So the reporter does just that!

When she asks him about the mysterious 17 deaths, he says gosh, it was just an unlucky summer for them, check out our new shopping center!

I did not have sex with that urban legend.

The reporter interviews Vanessa next, and as the mayor continues to watch on, he and Jefferson decide they need to get that tape before it airs to protect tourism.

After a local fisherman gets eaten, Vanessa tries again to convince the mayor, this time with her Bigfoot style photo, and no surprise it does no good.

In the meantime, Jefferson heads into the bar to try and chat up the reporter, which leads to a sex scene I really could have done without. But they do some pretty creative intercutting with the scene in the bar.

Also, "How corrupt is the mayor??" is the best pillow talk line ever.

While she goes into the shower to clean up, Jefferson swipes the tape and beats feet out of there.

One of the officers that I'm pretty sure is not the boyfriend shows up to take Vanessa out on the water to search for an aquanoid.

Or, maybe he's just there to try and kill her on orders from the mayor and Jefferson, because she's making waves.

They get into a pretty brutal fight, and she dumps his ass overboard, leaving him to his fate with the aquanoids. But man, the aquanoid is gonna find this poor sad sack who just got his ass handed to him and left out to sea and be like, "Aww, aww man, I can't, I can't just eat a guy in such a state, aww geeze."

While Vanessa hides out at Sean Beef's place, we cut to the mayor's daughter and friends having a 'party' on the beach, but it's like, three people.

They start mentioning a LOT of other sea creature movies, from Corman's Humanoids from the Deep, to Italian Jaws knock offs, and y'all should stop bringing up flicks WAY better than this one.

After that, Jefferson shows up at Jackson's place to take care of things himself, and we get a bit of a cheesy shootout around Sean Beef's truck.

Back at the 'party' Roger goes out to sea after Chad - oh what a perfect name - warns him not to be eaten by aquanoids, and long story short, everyone gets murdered, and the aquanoid must have heard them mention Humanoids, because it decides to rape the mayor's daughter.

Our zeroes arrive at the same beach, just in time to see an aquanoid duck underwater, and Sean Beef tries shooting at it, forgetting shooting water is next to useless.

As the creature swims off, the trio arm up, and they give Vanessa's friend a gun AND a camera, and hopefully she doesn't confuse which one to point and shoot when.

Bro, I said DON’T get eaten by aquanoids!!

Debra is in shock, wandering the roads, and one of the rangers picks her up and takes her to the ME, because I guess this town only has one doctor. That has to be rough during tourism season.

Since we are truly into Humanoids ripoff territory at this point, she gives birth to a lizard, that the officer quickly kills.

The ME tries to brush off what the creature is, but eventually spills all the beans to the officer, and he rushes off to get help.

It's not long before the mayor shows up to meet his grandkid and see his dead daughter, and it ends with them murdering the ME.

This leads to a car chase and shoot out, and holy potatoes the movie tries doing split screens and multiple angles, but STOP THAT you are not DePalma!

After Jefferson gets killed by the ranger, we're back on the beach for our final confrontation with the aquanoid. Which amounts to a LOT of silent swimming footage that they do not make very exciting.

Doing my best to give y’all a look at this thing.

Sean Beef gets attacked, and before he can meet the same fate as his facesake, Vanessa spears the thing, and the Aquanoid goes boom!

They get onto the beach and are all victory lapping and YEAH and WOO and YEAH!! instead of like, hey, before Jackson bleeds out, let's get to the hospital!

Oh and also HE IS YOUR FATHER. Which makes me raise the question…did he let the guy at the start die so he could be with Vanessa’s mom and his kid, and it went horribly wrong?? or am I reading too much into things this movie doesn’t care about?

That's when OH WAIT there is a second aquanoid that shows up to attack Christina, and it does jack and shit until Vanessa runs over and spears it too.

But we STILL can't be over because the corrupt mayor shows up to try and murder them all, until he gets taken out by Officer Boyfriend.

Can we finally be done with this movie?? The answer is yes, as our survivors ride off into the sunset, and the reporter and interim mayor continue the story of "Are they real? We just don't know!"

And you keep that baby aquanoid tease out of my face!!

TRIS ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s not great, everything is weirdly soft and washed out, and for a 2000ish movie, it should look better than it does.

Audio: It sounds better than it looks, even if some moments sound like they’re filmed in a cavern.

Sound Bite: "What seems to be the problem, sir?" "FUCKIN' SHARK!"

Body Count: A very nice pile of corpses, I must say.

1 - Man gets attacked about 3 minutes and 30 years ago by an Aquanoid

2 - And then his girlfriend

3 - Surfer dude gets eaten

4 - Eric the ranger gets killed

5 - Fisherman gets killed

6 - Officer Stanzie gets eaten

7 - Julie gets eaten

8 - And then Chad

9 - Roger gets eaten

10 - Debra dies giving birth

11 - Aquababy dies soon after, squished by another officer.

12 - Mayor shoots the ME in the head

13 - Officer kills Clinton

14 - Mayor kills officer

15 - Vanessa kills the Aquanoid with an explosive spear

15 - Another aquanoid gets harpooned and explodes

16 - Officer kills the mayor

Best Corpse: Roger getting gashed up and down his back are some great effects, but I have a soft spot in my for the baby Winterbeast creature too.

Blood Type - C: Some good blood, some nice makeup effects, and the creature work on the baby is good, and the aquanoid itself is a decent looking costume, when I get a look at it.

Sex Appeal: Boobs during skinny dipping, and when Debra gives birth.

Drink Up! whenever you see Aquanoid vision.

Movie Review: When I first watched this, I was not thrilled. It’s pretty dumb. The acting is nothing to wite home about. The plot is silly. But at the end of the day, it’s not terribly made, I’ve sure seen worse. It’s growing on me each time I had to watch it to bring this rant to you. It’s not great, but it’s perfectly serviceable. It could be worse, that’s for sure. Three out of five scooters.

Entertainment Value: This is the saving grace of the movie, and even then it’s pretty slim. The acting gives you chuckles, the story is such a ridiculous knockoff of everything. Watching Jackson squint his way through the movie. This movie gives off HUGE “Eric Roberts should be in this” energy, for a movie he is nowhere near. The monsters are nicely unique, and the sudden I AM YOUR FATHER twist is bonkers. It’s still tough to say go see it, since it feels so light, but there’s enough there, with a group, this could be fun. Three out of five dead babies.