I'm King of the Asylum!

You've probably heard of a movie called Titanic. It won a few Oscars, earned a little bit of cash, gave the world more Billy Zane, and just might have made 8th-grade-Emily cry a few teenage tears. 

The odds are lower that you ever bothered to check out 2010's Titanic 2. 

What, you didn't know they made a sequel?

The beauty of history is that it can't be trademarked, so legally, there was nothing stopping The Asylum from its title (heck, it's the name of the BOAT, see?). Shockingly, I, like most of humankind, have also not seen Titanic 2, but it takes more than Tubi ads to stop me from checking out its 654th entry!

Wait...they didn't make 666 Titanic movies? They just decided to call Titanic 3 Titanic 666? 

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING?

Quick Plot: 110 years after the ill-fated voyage of a certain big boat, some ad wizard came up with a very dumb idea: let's do it again! 

Titanic 3 sets sail under the dutiful care of Captain Rhoades. Also on board: a gaggle of influencers, some original Titanic artifacts (because THAT'S what you want to see on a luxury cruise) and the bloodthirsty descendent of the ship's doomed captain. What could possibly go wrong?

As you might guess, a lot! Ghosts, icebergs, and of course, bargain bin CGI that makes you realize those powerpoint presentations you've been cutting and pasting with watermarked Google image searches aren't so bad after all!

When it comes to The Asylum Studios' output, you're likely getting one of two things: lazy filmed-in-a-week greenscreen slobber with a goofy title or concept, or a simple micro-budget genre flick that makes a valiant but doomed effort to create an actual movie. I've never seen a GREAT Asylum film, but I've watched my share of passable to GOOD ones (said with an enthusiastic, surprising tone that sounds like I'm shouting a question). 

So where does Titanic 666 land? To use an apt visual metaphor, I'd say it's capsizing quickly towards the greenscreen slobber. Its setup is perfectly fine, but there's just no OOMPH to the actual action. Save for a tragically underused Annalynne McCord (more on her later), the performances are disappointingly bland. Any sinking ship thriller should at least have the sense to give us the broad ensemble strokes so we have some sense of place and doom when the horror is going down, but Titanic 666 just kind of drifts from moment to the next. It's not shocking when you assume a movie like this was written/storyboarded/filmed/edited in less time than it took Celine Dion to record the dance mix of My Heart Will Go On, but you know, it would just be nice to still be entertained. 

High Points

When five minutes in, Annalynne McCord switches from human voice to influencer vocal fry and it's the perfect sign of how much she knows exactly what she's doing. Say what you will about the um, spoken word poet with a very clear theory on Vladimir Putin's experiences with his mother, but you know what? Girl can serve this type of ridiculous character like no one else. She has impeccable timing for this kind of role, and even manages to convince you there's an actual person underneath the filter. 

Low Points 

(the SPOILER EDITION)

So then Titanic 666 has the nerve to kill her in the first act? And no, this isn't a Drew Barrymore-arguable-cameo-in-Scream situation. The movie opens its story as if Mia will be one of many Poseidon-ish team leads, and just ... disposes of her without nearly enough fanfare. It's a shame not only because McCord is so much fun in the role, but also because no other character comes close to registering as either likable or enjoyably hatable 

Lessons Learned

Mediums and cosplayers demand extra security

If you're going to display valuable 100 year old artifacts on a vessel filled with thousands of (often drunk) civilians, maybe it would be worth another $10 to put them behind locked glass

State of the art engines do not overheat

Rent/Bury/Buy

Nobody goes into Titanic 666 expecting to be scared or impressed, but it would have been nice to have been slightly more entertained. I've seen far worse from the Asylum, but aside from this movie's concept and the all-too-brief antics of McCord, there's just not much to remember about Titanic 666...other than the fact that someone made a movie called Titanic 666.