Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Allison Davies
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
mark-818-758555
So the premise as other people have stated is that the magnetic poles are destabilising and causing various problems because of an asteroid/comet strike.Well the science is almost complete nonsense in this movie.But before I get to that...I like the fact that the president of the United States only talks to his experts via video conference (in spite of the fact that the communications satellites were fried and there is an almost world wide communications blackout as stated in the movie)...and the total number of people he seems to consult are his main adviser, a scientist who broke the story to the world and his father who is also in the military. I would have thought they would have at least had one or two (or more likely 100) guys from NASA in the meeting! The special effects are lame...for example when James Mayfield's wife and son drive through the town and the crack in the road opens up and swallows the car...the long shots show other cars, buildings and trees...only a few feet away...and none of them are moving...in fact there isn't even enough of a breeze to make the leaves in the trees move! Yet we are led to believe that a twenty foot wide chasm has just opened up! The guy with the pacemaker lived in a town where one of the mini-poles is...seems to survive until he gets in the car with them...then he dies because of the EM pulse! He would have been a goner when the first EM pulse struck not the twentieth! Also she tells them to cut the engine and turn off all electrical stuff...well...I was unaware that switching off the ignition in a car switched off all power! The last time I got in my car, the central locking worked without the engine running...the clock ran on the dashboard...the cigarette lighter worked...you get the idea...essentially you would have to disconnect the battery to switch off all electrical equipment within the car. The jump start of the car is also completely stupid...going against the previous logic in the movie and physics! Then there is the plan to drop a couple of nukes (a cliché in itself) to solve the problem. So they send one plane...and when that doesn't work because the plane is hit by a EM pulse...the answer is not to do as James says...send another one...send twenty...no, the general says no more, come up with another plan! So the other plan is to send the nukes via submarine! OK...rubbish plan for so many reasons. Drop the nukes down in the Marinara Trench...because that would be an easy place to get the nukes into the core right! Wrong again...Can't even be bothered to go into why that is so wrong a suggestion. But they do mention massive tectonic shifts...but no mention of massive world wide earth quakes, tsunamis etc...which would have been triggered...and most of the scenery shown on the various travelogues in the film would have been unrecognisable because of earth quakes, tidal waves, volcano eruptions etc. Come to think of it...why is the sky always pristine blue in this movie? Surely if bad things were happening...there would be huge clouds of dust, acid rain, nuclear style winters with all light blotted out from the ash produced by the erupting volcanoes etc??? I also hate the we're going to die while saving the world...no wait...I have a way out...we'll get into the super heated water vent and get shot to the surface nonsense...no..if you do that...you'll die! And the typical last five minute of a movie fix for everything and then back to normal...is also so unbelievable for such a catastrophic occurrence. And why is there always only one solution available and one set of people able to do it in these sort of films? OK...I know the answer to this...it is to make the movie more exciting and dramatic...well supposedly!IMO the acting is wooden and the story line could have been OK if they'd have got the science right...or taken it way off track (like 2012 extremes)...where you suspend your reality check and just enjoy it for what it is...entertainment. Suggestion to the directors/producers/writers - stop doing this and become more productive members of society!Anyway...give this film a wide berth as it will annoy more than entertain.This review is based on my reality and is my own opinion...which you are more than welcome to disagree with!
Shawn Connelly
Note to self... Never watch another Paul Ziller project again; EVER! IMDb won't allow reviews of less than 1000 words but seriously this ridiculous farce doesn't deserve more than a few choice adjectives.Some have commented that this is not bad, so long as you ignore the bad science. And by bad science, that doesn't mean Star Wars type science... because this movie takes itself seriously, it has an obligation to, at least, attempt to get the science correct. However, no such attempts are made anywhere in this video production. Clearly Paul Ziller is clueless about even grade school science and couldn't afford or want a science consultant.Aside from the bad science, overall the script is amateurish, and the acting was mostly terrible. One notable exception is Jack Coleman, he must have needed the work but overall his acting was pretty good despite everything else.For those who actually wish to subject themselves to this horrible video, I will point out a few less noticeably errors (without revealing spoilers): 1. The telescope shown early in the video is a cheap Tasco (or similar brand) 4.5" (or 6") with a non-motorized German Eq mount. It is not worth any more than $400.00. In the video, it is valued at 10x that amount.2. In Alaska, a laptop's LCD screen is shown acting as if it were a CRT monitor. LCD screens do not display a wave effect in the presence of an EMF field.3. As a large comet fragment enters the atmosphere overhead, it will create massive amounts of heat and an enormous shock wave which will wipe out everything over a large area. No impact required! That covers about 1% of the problems in the first 1/2 hour of the video.
Mack Benz
Well, this was a fun film all and all. Jack Coleman did a great job in one of his first lead roles in a feature film, like a really good job. Apart from that, the rest of the cast were great too, I particularly liked the scene of the mugger car jacking them in broad daylight, well played.For the budget, 9/10.Overall, 5.5-6, because like many said, it has too many loopholes and the continuity team could have briefed over this script a few more times, hell a joint smoking monkey could have fixed some of the errors, but one writers bad attempt at an exciting action scene might be a visual effects artists opportunity of a lifetime, or an actors golden shot for their reel.The humour is far and few between, but it has its moments and it's pretty genuine, for the most part.Enjoy it as a fun B budget disaster movie of 2009.
bababear
Shown tonight under the title SOLAR STORM, this turned out to be a really good little movie. Sci-Fi is famous (infamous?) for taking really good story ideas and turning them into disappointing movies that can't deliver on their promise.SOLAR STORM is primarily set in a pleasant small town in Washington State (played, of course, by Canadian locations) where a famous scientist and his wife, who's a science teacher, and his teenage stepson live in harmony until the Earth's magnetic poles start doing really strange things.It seems that a big piece of a comet's tail hit the Earth in Alaska and did some serious damage. Then Dr. James Mayfield (played by Jack Coleman from the TV series "Heroes" discovers that the sun isn't setting in the place where it ought to.It seems that the earth has shifted on its axis and the poles are in the process of reversing. The last time that happened was about a million years ago, and if it happens now there will be no living thing on the planet.Director Paul Ziller has enough sense not to bite off more than he can chew. There are no detailed scenes of destruction in big cities with thousands of extras running in terror. He focuses the attention on the Mayfields and their town, and doesn't try to fake big budget special effects.What's done is done pretty well. And the performers are strong enough to keep up our interest. Since my daughter was writing a paper for a college class I watched using headphones, and the sound effects are very effective.Need I add that the authorities- including the President and Dr. Mayfield's father , General Mayfield (the two haven't spoken for five years)- want to ignore the call for alarm and calm the population that everything is all right? Would it surprise you that Mayfield's stepson is unhappy about his mother's remarriage (it's not mentioned specifically, but the boy's stepfather is about 24 years older than his wife)? This is not a work of original ideas. A little Armageddon, a touch of DEEP IMPACT, a possible solution to the problem that's borrowed from the very fine 1961 film THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE, and a rescue that comes courtesy of Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.There's even a little bit of subtext about parent/child relationships and the issue of whether to blindly trust authority or to trust your instincts.Good work, Sci-Fi Channel. Well done.
