Every 'Sharknado' Movie, Ranked

By the time the Sharknado franchise reached its sixth film, there was no gas in the tank, and it shows. The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time isn’t “so bad, it’s good.” It’s just plain bad. Continuing from the events of the last film, Sharknado: It’s About Time sees our cast jumping through multiple time periods to stop the sharknadoes appearing across the timestream.

The film is stuffed with pointless celebrity cameos (more so than usual) and seems more intent on crafting a story that ends the series while forgetting that audiences didn’t come to see The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time for its plot. They want tornadoes full of sharks! Instead, you get a movie that seems just as lazy as Movie 43 (2013), which is saying something. Nearly all of its segments are poorly written, poorly acted, and with some truly terrible CG, even by the franchise’s low standards. While all other Sharknado movies appear in the top 25,000 movies being streamed on JustWatch, Sharknado: It’s About Time is the only movie not on that list at the time of writing. That alone speaks for itself. 

When you watch a Sharknado movie, chances are, you want to see sharks in tornadoes. Sharknado: The 4th Awakens tries to be anything but a Sharknado movie, which, in turn, makes it completely forgettable. Don’t let the title parodying Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) fool you; there’s very little, if anything, creative about this movie. While there are still plenty of sharks flying through the air, including nuclear sharks, the middle of the film presents a bunch of halfhearted natural disasters that feel like poorly thought-out attempts at expanding the franchise.

There’s a greater emphasis on sci-fi here, with plenty of farcical jargon that would fit right at home in Moonfall (2022), but you can’t help but feel that the folks at Syfy were trying to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. If you’ve grown tired of seeing the same old sharknado, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens shakes things up, but why would you want to watch a Sharknado movie about anything other than a sharknado?

The worst sin that Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! commits is being boring. By all accounts, it’s still the same old Sharknado, but the film lacks a certain spark that is pretty noticeable. As the first Sharknado movie to go beyond a single city and go all in on its campiness, you would think that would lead to some truly outrageous moments—and you would be right to an extent. The franchise literally jumped the shark and sent Ian Ziering to space to kill some sharks. But it also feels very safe and perfunctory, like Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989). 

You have a premise that is ripe for potential, but it feels like the same old, same old, just without any real set-piece moments. Say what you will about the later movies, but at least they had memorable set pieces. Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! is lacking confidence in itself, most evident in its cliffhanger ending, and it feels like a step back when compared to the first two films. 

Sandwiched between the worst installments of the series is Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, an entry that has no right being as good as it is. It’s not amazing, mind you, but it is certainly ambitious. As the most expensive Sharknado movie, costing approximately $5 million to produce, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming is a globe-trotting adventure a la Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Seeing Ian Ziering and his pals hop around the world to deal with an interdimensional sharknado is just the right amount of stupid.

Sharknado 5: Global Swarming flagrantly flaunts its idiocy and doesn’t care whatsoever. Of course, there’s an evil shark god at the center of the Earth. At this point, why wouldn’t there be? The film is constantly one-upping itself until it gets to a mesmerizingly hilarious climax, so if you want to be left dumbfounded by just how nonsensical a movie can get, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming is prepared to rise to the occasion.

Sharknado was never meant to be as big a hit as it was. The original film underperformed when it first premiered on the Syfy Channel, but thanks to positive word of mouth on Twitter, it became a meme, and the rest is history.

Unlike the other films in the series, which are intentionally comedic, Sharknado actually plays itself fairly seriously. The first film doesn’t even feature the eponymous sharknado until around the halfway point of its 85-minute runtime. Instead, it spends the first half setting up its cast as if it were Jaws 3-D (1983). It does pay off, since we grow to genuinely care about the characters and whether or not they can survive this ludicrous natural disaster. Again, this isn’t high art, but its competency is its biggest strength. It’s not a parody of itself yet, so if you want to see a tongue-in-cheek but still serious movie about killer sharks, you can’t do much worse than the original Sharknado. 

Some movies just understand New York City. Do The Right Thing (1989), Rent (2005), and When Harry Met Sally (1989) all scream New York, and Sharknado 2: The Second One deserves to be in the crowd of the best movies about New York City.

Much like the first film, Sharknado 2: The Second One finds the right balance of tongue-in-cheek humor and melodramatic character drama that makes low-budget action movies like these work. The secret to the movie’s success is seeing just how much New York iconography crams into the film’s 95-minute runtime. There’s fighting sharks at a Mets game, throwing a shark into a pizza oven, and seeing New Yorkers rise up to fight the horde of sharks attacking their city. Add in some of the most gloriously testosterone-filled imagery ever put to film, and you have a movie that is perfect for a bad movie night. It has the action, the comedy, and the heart to be not only a fun watch with friends, but also the best Sharknado movie of all time.