There are some things that really bug you when people get them wrong.
Usually, they’re the simple things that anyone who made the slightest effort would get right. And I do mean the slightest.
Now I’m not referring to the fact that we’re told that what is obviously a World War II vintage warship is part of our modern Navy. Nor am I referring to the rather curious fact that, when attacked by giant worm things, they shoot at them with rifles and handguns for quite a while before it occurs to anyone to use all those turrets full of guns, or to the helicopters changing from UH-1s to Seahawks whenever they happen to feel like it, or the squadron of long abandoned Huey Cobra gunships, or even to Naval officers referring to their crew as “soldiers.” All of those are seriously wrongheaded, and, like the out of thin air romance stuck in at the end, reflect the minimal effort that seems to have gone into this one.
No, I’m referring to the even stranger fact that the leader of what is obviously some sort of elite team — special ops or something unspecified like that — who has a Captain and Lieutenant working under his command, is identified as “Chief.”
And just in case you missed it, yes they do refer to him as a CPO and I think they actually said “Chief Petty Officer” at least once.
Now this may have gone over some of your heads, but the reality is that a CPO is roughly equivalent to, say, a Master Sergeant in the Army. In other words, he’s a non-commissioned officer and even the lowliest Ensign — let alone a Captain or Lieutenant — outranks him.
Okay, maybe it’s a “Halo” effect from a certain videogame, but it does define the level of silliness we’re talking about here. A fleet led by a suspiciously old Warship (played by the mothballed USS Iowa) commanded by Admiral Linda Hamilton, who is also looking a bit old, goes in search of the President of the United States, whose official “Escape from New York” escape capsule has landed somewhere in The Bermuda Triangle.
Turns out that all the disappearances there were caused by the giant, biomechanical monster which then attacks the fleet, and, of course, our hero with the suspicious rank must lead his team on the dangerous rescue mission.
While breaking a few orders here and there, of course. It’s that sort of movie.
Now I’m sure The Asylum has probably made worse films for the SyFy network, although I’ll admit that reflects my confidence in their, ahem, “abilities.” And there’s a lot of reasonably competent digital effects supporting what should (I repeat, should) be an intriguing pulp Sci Fi sort of story. I mean, aliens, giant monsters, commandos, how can you go wrong?
But I think we all know the answer to that one.
But it all leaves me asking one rather unavoidable question: if you need to buy time for your commando mission, instead of letting the rampaging alien machine destroy a city (on Cape Hatteras, an empty sandspit barrier island) shouldn’t you throw everything you have in your fleet against it to distract the darn thing?
But if you did, then you would get in your canned moment of growth for the main character, I suppose.
Oh, well. Maybe the next SyFy movie I watch will be better.
They might even find out that candy is good for you….
rivets on the poster 
2 thoughts on “Bermuda Tentacles (2014)”