Sara Paxton, Sara Paxton, and Sara Paxton. Now that you know why I saw “Shark Night” in the first place, let’s skip the excuses. And it’s only apt, since “Shark Night” should really be called “All the Boys Love Sara Paxton.” It feels like the studio only had sharks in a lake as a concept for a film and basic outline. They then discovered they were casting Sara Paxton, and they basically built the film around her. What starts as a goofy yarn about sharks in a lake, transforms in to Sara Paxton vs. Sharks in a Lake. The film is a love letter to Paxton and her absolutely unique sex appeal. She’s a country born small town ideal college girl who everyone wants. Guys flirt with her, girls hang around her, and even her own dog refuses to leave her side. She engages in a high speed chase with the local sheriff who happens to be her friend and he laughs off her fleeing, flirts with her, and has a beer! Even after she and her friends are hunted by sharks while their friend bleeds to death from a bitten off arm, the men still try to get Paxton’s character in to the sack.
Upon its initial release, John Carpenter’s “The Thing” was poorly received both at the box-office and by critics. It didn’t help that it had been released around the time of “E.T” and its domination of pop culture, and that it had been considered by most to be a remake of a classic, barely flawed monster movie from the fifties. John Carpenter proved you can remake a film and provide your own twist without ruining the integrity of the original. “The Thing” is considered by most to be the closest adaptation to the original short story “Who Goes There?” around, while “The Thing From Another World” is not so much an adaptation and opts to create a hulking beast in place of an amorphous entity that hides inside human beings. Perhaps they thought it’d be too cerebral or dark for its time.
“Cold Storage” doesn’t have much in the way of a narrative, but then the whole purpose of “The Walking Dead” webisodes is to whet the appetites of fans craving more of Robert Kirkman’s world, and to give producer Gregory Nicotero something to do. Show producer and special effects master Gregory Nicotero is slowly making his way in to the directing business, lensing some of the episodes for the hit series, and directing both web series for the hit horror drama. “Torn Apart” was a much more meaningful and concentrated effort in the Walking Dead mythology as we got to know the origin of bicycle girl. “Cold Storage” has a link to the show, but only in a mere lip service sense. It’s an “oh look!” moment and then it passes.