When flying over the Bermuda Triangle, Air Force One is attacked by giant sea tentacles, in this 2014 Syfy channel original that finally answers the mystery of what happened to Linda Hamilton.

Quick disclaimer, I watched this film in French and therefore lost some of the finer details, such as who anyone is and why it was made. Hamilton plays a US Navy admiral trying to locate the president, who is stranded at the bottom of the ocean in an escape pod and quickly running out of oxygen, though apparently not as fast as she is running out of money from James Cameron’s divorce settlement.

She enlists a Navy SEAL chief (Trevor Donovan) who lost his best friend in a previous non-tentacle related incident in Afghanistan for which he still blames the admiral, and is so consumed by this baggage that he hardly seems to notice the fact they are being attacked by some sort of gigantic biomechanical starfish.

Despite being the title character, the extraterrestrial tentacles have surprisingly little impact on the generic action plot. Everyone reacts with mild resignation, as though gigantic alien weaponry is just the latest headache to wash up on American shores after carcinogenic materials and Chris Christie.

That lack of attention extends to the design and CGI, so poorly planned and rendered that the tentacles fluctuate in size from one shot to the next. This is a problem for a movie presumably conceived around the spectacle of flailing tentacle attacks, but they are an afterthought in a film without any thoughts to begin with.

To give it some kind of credit, Bermuda Tentacles dives straight into the titular tentacular action without wasting time building up to the reveal, which would only delay the disappointment, and also makes it funny that the tagline is: “The mystery is finally revealed.” The internet suggests it is meant to be a comedy, and while occasionally laughably bad it is surprisingly dry for the most part.

Interestingly though I was able to watch it because French broadcaster TF1 has put all of its programming on Netflix, which means Netflix users in France have access to all kinds of shitty made-for-TV movies, and also TF1 content.