Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

drugaddictsinthejungle I put off watching this for ages partly because of the critical reviews I read, but now think some of that criticism has been unfair, and slightly missed the point.There's nothing much really wrong with Octopus in the context of its genre. Several things consecutively explode into fireballs in the first 15 minutes, and that's not even mentioning the first glimpse of our friend the squid, I mean what do you want, blood? There are -so many- films that I've made a point of watching purely because they're reportedly bad, in the hope they'll be bad-in-a-fun-way. Most of the time they're bad-in-a-boring-way. This film isn't even technically bad: yes it obviously had a lower budget than Transformers: Dark of the Moon, but anyone who uses that against it is probably like that bloke out of Terror Firmer: "If you don't have the budget, don't make the movie." Drokk that stomm. Octopus performs admirably given the resources available to it.The camera doesn't shake, the camera moves and editing techniques are largely tried-and-tested, but always executed perfectly adequately. The acting is exaggerated but the whole exercise was not a study in social realism. It's good old 80s-action-movie-style acting. They've even got an 80s-action-movie-style baddie (I think he says "lovely jubbly" at some point but it's hard to tell because of his cool 80s-action-movie-baddie accent).There was a female lead, but that was more-or-less it for women cast members unfortunately. But she held her own and wouldn't have felt out of place even if they'd cut all the bits when she's just in her bra and/or pants. Other people have compared the male lead to Keanu Reeves, and although he doesn't really look or act like him, there was something similar there, I'm not sure what. He can move his face more than Keanu can. The scene where he'd HAD ENOUGH was reminiscent of the "room service" monologue from Johnny Mnemonic, that had something to do with it.I better admit this now so you can decide whether or not to trust my judgement: I love Johnny Mnemonic and I think The Matrix is boring. This film was a laugh in a similar way to Johnny Mnemonic. The octopus is AT LEAST as impressive and convincing as that dolphin. Right yes, the octopus. The old fella himself. We don't only see him right at the end as some have said, that's a lie, he's either there or we're waiting for him to pop out again at any moment for at least the last half of the running time. He's...hang on, I don't know why it's suddenly a he, we never find out the gender, sorry; it's realised using a mixture of rubber tentacles (hurrah) and CG that's competent enough not to be distracting (so one-up on X-Men Origins: Wolverine and that sort of thing, at least).The lighting like the acting is usually (intentionally) unrealistic and exaggerated (one shot of two actors' heads is nicely backlit so you can see all the hairs coming out of their noses), but it's not unpleasant to look at. Much better than the perpetual gloominess of the ocean they'd have to go for if it was a more serious film, I mean look at The Abyss, that film was TIRING to look at. Also it was SO DULL, at least Octopus has a sense of humour and the good grace to finish before the hundred-minute mark.Scriptwise, the plot was fairly nonsensical, but again not distractingly so, and anyway WHO CARES, it's a MASSIVE MUTANT OCTOPUS. There were lots of lovely cheesy quotable lines too.Anyway, all these things help to create what I'd be willing to bet was the intended tone. I'd stake my good name on it: -intended- tone. Anyone who thinks they're laughing at this film rather than with it is probably (most of the time) kidding themselves, the humour is self-aware and is one of the main things that kept me watching. This film is a laugh, it's funny, it's fun, and it wouldn't hurt you to watch it. If you disagree I'll fight you.

alistairc_2000 Do you remember the time in the 1970s when they first started showing Ray Harryhusen's monster movies on the 3 channels of terrestrial TV? Those wonderful days when stop animation was the very pinnacle special effects. That is when I cut my teeth with classics like Gorgo, 20,000,000 miles to earth, Godzilla etc. Alright only one of them was stop animation and the other two were guys in rubber suits but hell they were fun!! So I went to the post office the other day and found 6 nu image movies containing all the classic schlock horror movies. So I thought this is the perfect time to have a horror monster retrospective. I looked and thought what will be the best of them Crocodile by Tobe Hooper can back the thought. I watched that a couple of months back so I thought Octopus. Why not it was fun in 200000 leagues under the see, okay that was squid but it is basically it is the same creature.This is a feeble excuse for a monster movie. The movie starts with the prologue about the Cuban missile crisis, a Russian sub that looks extremely modern gets sunk by an American sub. The Russian sub is carrying chemical nasties to use against the American. They are spilt out into the sea and we know what toxic chemicals make…..Monsters! So we know where it came from, just do not put any in your coffee as you might turn into a monster. At least that would be a novel plot.Then it is the present day and two CIA agents are on the trail of a nasty bomber, in Bulgaria, why Bulgaria I wondered and then it I settled on an idea because it is cheap. So our intrepid band are on the trail of the bomber and after one of them dies in very predicable circumstances. The second one captures the bomber and he is a hero for a nano-second before being asked to baby sit the bomber back to the USA. So the sub goes through the Bermuda triangle (or some other cursed area) and the octopus attacks.They authors of the screenplay obviously wanted to make more than just a monster movie and this is the films undoing. If they had called it from Russia with Octopus love it might have been nearer to the plot ideas. There is a really silly cold war drama with a monster movie plot mixed in and it just does not work. There are loads of holes in the plot. They can talk under water and hear people scream. The integrity of the sub is compromised and it is 1000 metres down and it does not implode, now that is just plain daft. Also they manage to survive a nuclear explosion from a 100 metres away. The monster is great and sticks it tentacles in wherever they are not wanted. Unfortunately you just do not see it enough of it. The acting for the most part is awful, with people over reacting so much as to make their performances laughable.Thankfully it has quite a fun ending as the naughty huge octopus decides it wants to have some more lunch and attacks a cruise liner. I recommend this movie for masochists and insomniacs everywhere. Well what do you expect for 50p? The movie is presented in bog standard 4:3 with a trailer as its extras. With a movie this bad you take it as a blessing that there is no audio commentary.

ebiros2 The production is pretty good with this movie. They could have made it into a solid B movie if the dialog wasn't so bad. The one who wrote the script should be shot. The acting wasn't so great either but not sure if this is a side effect of crappy scripting. The actors themselves seemed decent enough, except for the Roy character who constantly over acted the scenes.Special effects were also acceptable for a movie of this type, so they shot themselves in the foot somehow and made this into less of a movie than it could have been.This movie could have been better if they took out all the silly over acting, and put in better dialogs.

Red-Barracuda There seems to be a lot of cheap marine-based monster movies. I don't exactly know why this is the case but these flicks are rarely anything other than mediocre at best. Octopus is one of the ones from the lower reaches of this scale. It does that thing that most of these films do where you have two concurrent stories happening at the same time. One involves the monster and the other involves a conflict of some sort between good guys and bad guys. This formula is rolled out continually for some reason, maybe it's so that the film can function as a horror/sci-fi film as well as an action/thriller, thereby attracting more people to it. But, the thing is, is that a film called 'Octopus' should really be primarily about a, well, an octopus really. This film, like many of its ilk, sort of forgets about the title creature for too much of the running time and focuses on the other action/thriller plot strand. This is almost always a mistake, and means that these films don't end up delivering what they essentially promise.Octopus is mostly set in a submarine. What I have learned from unfortunate experience is that almost all cheap movies set in a submarine are terrible. The confines of the sub make for dreary and boring scenes. This film is absolutely no different on this score. In actual fact the opening moments on land involving the terrorist attack are verging on being quite good but once we are under water things rapidly worsen. The title monster does eventually pitch up but as you could reasonably expect, he is a creature of bad CGI origins. You really don't see much more usually than a few tentacles and repeated shots. He does seem to change size at will as well so that by the end he is large enough to engulf a cruise ship. This finale, despite being pretty poor is at least the sort of thing you expected to see from the outset, so it's basically OK. But for the rest of it, it consists of not very interesting events surrounding an incredibly annoying terrorist who the heroes, for some unfathomably reason, never actually choose to shoot in the head. Which would have been the correct decision for everyone, viewers included.There is not an awful lot to recommend in Octopus to be perfectly honest. Although if you have seen a few of these types of movies from either the Sci-Fi Channel or The Asylum then you will no doubt not be in the least bit surprised with the contents of this one. It's yet another typical example of this sort of undersea monster dreck I'm afraid. Not enough schlock, too much tedium, sadly.