Earth's Final Hours (2011)

Never mind the plot and acting... I don't even have to talk about them.This is seriously the most nausea-inducing movie I've ever seen, and it's all due to the shaky-cam. I actually had to look away during several of the scenes and those include the set-bound "office" shots. And don't even try to follow any of the flight or flight scenes.The other irritating thing is the score. You know how for the main menu on a DVD the music plays on a loop? Well, get used to it. This soundtrack consists literally of one blaring chord, which just gets louder as things get more "dangerous".The main character was not too bad as an actor, and Bruce Davison did what he could. The girlfriend was one of the worst I'd ever seen, smiling through every single line, as much as Denise Richards in Starship Troopers. Can you believe two people in this film were in the X-Men movies?

The movie is as advertised - a SyFy made for TV movie. The low reviews seem to be based on the expectation of a great SciFi movie like Star Trek or Armageddon. When making a science fiction movie, the film falls into one of two categories - well researched plausible subject matter or 'no way this could happen' subject. The SyFy Channel made for TV movies usually fall into the later. The story lines and scripts are usually shallow with little deep character development, less than exceptional film technique, and virtually no scientific research. This situation makes for campy 'stupid worthless, don't even bother' movies. The story plots are always the same good guys want to save the earth and bad guys want to make money. This campy bad movie is part of the attraction - like the movies that use to play on the Saturday afternoon matinées . Based on specials that the SyFy Channel has done, this is the intent of these movies. Some well known serious actors have made these 'bad' movies. Why - because it is fun!! ***Spoiler Alert*** The reason I gave this a lower rating because the camera movement. Some camera movement, like with car crashes or any situation where the camera is suppose to be 'third person' is important to the movie. This constant camera movement is more of a distraction in this movie.

This is probably the first and last time anyone will say this, but... Futurama portrayed this subject matter much more realistically. The premise is that something hit the earth so hard it stopped spinning.The episode "That Darn Katz"on Futurama had a similar premise. Except... having cats stealing the earth's rotational energy make a heck of a lot more sense. It neatly explains where all the earth's rotational energy is going. It acknowledges that a planet abruptly stopping will have catastrophic effects on the things on said planet. Likewise it also explains where the energy to get a planet spinning again comes from. That's even ignoring the fact the earth probably wouldn't have survived the impact in the first place (another problem Futurama side steps).Every time a character opens his mouth he/she speaks just enough to inform everyone in the audience "Hi! I don't actually know a single thing about what I'm talking about"I just don't know what was going through the writers heads!Take the convenient Deus Ex Machina energy ripples that start appearing? WHY? How does the earth stopping cause those? Why are their tendrils attracted to bit part characters and vehicles? Why do they appear only when there are characters about? No one really attempts to explain these things.And the sad thing is that a lot of this could have been easily avoided. Just say "The meteor is some kind of beacon for an alien invasion" and just jettison the whole earth stop spinning thing. Solves 50% of the plot holes, explains those energy ribbon things, also explains how a couple of satellites can stop it. You can solve another 25% of the plot hole by introducing the concept of alien possession, with the aliens unaccustomed to our existence. Which explains FBI agents acting like utter morons, for example, attempting to stop a transmission by whacking the satellite dish on the side and base of the dish part... rather than.. i don't know, whacking the vulnerable bit on the tip. Still leaves 25% of the plot hole generated by outright character stupidity.This would have made this movie a below average alien invasion flick, rather than an abysmal disaster flick. In all, pay attention to the writers of this flick, so you what movies to avoid.

Another day, another Sy-Fy (do you think they understand how ridiculous that contraction is?) production. Guess what? It's awful! I know, right? You'd have thought by now they would have taken the criticism of thousands of people on board and worked to produce movies that don't make you want to smash your face into a brick wall in stunned disbelief.Sadly, it appears they are incapable of learning. Also, it appears, they are adept at hiring people to write sci-fi that exhibit an extreme form of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Namely, they know enough to think they are clever, but actually are dumb as stumps.Apart from the utterly bobbins plot, which is just beyond ridicule, they proceed to ignore even basic science involving the characters and their abilities.Guns never jam or seem to need reloading. Satellite dishes never need to be aligned before use. Twenty year old technology works at first power up. The list is potentially endless.I felt sorry for Robert Knepper. He was by far the most capable actor here and actually tried really hard with his role. Sadly, his co-stars didn't put the same amount of effort into their parts. As a result, it seemed like his son and girlfriend had mental difficulties grasping the concept of the end of the world. They didn't. The actors playing them just had difficulties being actors.This effort also suffers from the "shaky-cam-to-make-it-look-more-real-and-exciting!" effect. It was clear that the cameraman had no direction other than "don't hold the camera still." Or maybe the guy holding the camera suffered from cerebral palsy, I don't know. Whatever, it's a nausea-inducing wobble-fest that gets annoying almost immediately.All in all, this one, like all SyFy movies, smells like something your cat squirted out of its rectum after rummaging in your junk-food-addicted neighbour's garbage bin.It's the kind of movie that makes you wonder if you've fallen through a hole in space and time and ended up in an alternate universe where the laws of physics are not just different, they're ludicrous.Just who is the target audience for this tripe? Do SyFy think so little of their viewers that they think any old bullshit they film will do? Surely they'd be better off spending the production budget on securing broadcast rights to actual movies, rather than trying to make their own? I really don't know what SyFy are doing. I really don't. They can produce some decent TV shows, but movies appear beyond them. What's worse, they are associating actors who should know better with utter garbage.SyFy channel....please stop!