*Madsen Spoilers ahead*A USA military vessel find survivors on a Russian submersible and finds themselves face to face with a giant shark.
In true tradition where the poster is better than the film, Megalodon is another low budget made for TV affair following in the fin tails of Shark Attack 3 and Megalodon (2002). When a giant shark is released after some illegal drilling most of the run time is spent with characters talking trivial lines, broken up by brief appearances of Michael Madsen chewing up sea air as Admiral King on an impressive the real Naval ship location.
Director James Thomas offers clips of a computer generated Meg shark swimming (recycled throughout) which occasionally bashes into the vessel. The effects are not much better than that of the superior Megalodon film Shark Hunter (2001).
That said, with zero budget Thomas offers a few Michael Bay-like sweeping camera shots. There's a handful of good performance and impressive Russian dialogue from the actors. Notably is Caroline Harris as Lynch, even if she is hankered by Thunder Levin's paper thin story and Koichi Petetsky's limited script.
With a surprisingly good score produced by three composers to compliment the shark eating a boat in one, Russians haphazardly trying to escape the US navel ship, complete with CGI gun flash and people falling about like on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise as the shark terrorise the crew.
A patriotic speech finishes the third act off, and we are also treated to two fights. One involving Lynch, with Cold War tension not seen since Rocky IV. And later Madsen's King heroically shows up one last time to help his seaman buddy Captain Streeper (Dominic Pace) in Die Hard/Under Siege style and literally face off with the shark.
Overall, it's not The Meg but it's all you'd expect from an Asylum production on the SYFY channel.
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