Ba'al (2008)

I wasn't expecting much from Ba'al:The Storm God, and I didn't get much. That said, compared to a lot of other SyFy projects, it's not that bad, the visual of Ba'al is a reasonable and somewhat interesting one, the photography and effects are far less crude than you would expect, the characters excepting the villain are reasonable and the sound is decent. However, the villain is rather trite and uninteresting, and the story is dull and predictable complete with some wooden acting, really clunky writing and uneven direction. In conclusion, it's not good, but it could have been worse too. 4/10 Bethany Cox

This must be the only movie with serious pretensions that exceeds in cheesiness Steve Martin's production in the movie "Bowfinger". To be fair, the people who made Ba'al may have had a smaller budget than Steve Martin's character had. Let's face it, the Black Sea doesn't really resemble an inlet on the West Coast of Canada. After all, it's a SEA, people. Sebastopol isn't ever visible from Turkey, not even on a clear day. Plus BC Parks information boards don't mark archaeological sites on the Turkish Black Sea. Plus, the construction crew look as if they're right out of a bar in Prince George, BC rather than Turks. Finally, the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept in Jerusalem. They're so important to the Jewish people that Israel doesn't let them out of the country, not even on tour. They have squat to do with Sumeria and the Hebrew alphabet was invented a millennium later. The Sumerians wrote on clay in cuneiform. Finally, the Dead Sea Scrolls are not written on stiff hand-tooled cowhide. They're written in ink on fragile sheepskin parchment that sometimes took a year to unroll. See them for yourself at the Shrine of the Book.I can forgive a low budget if the actors and screen writers turn in a decent effort. Nobody shows up for work in this turkey. The actors don't even try to make the stilted dialogue work. Lexa Doig turns in a particularly shameful performance, substituting a deer-in-the-headlights expression for emotion. The script writing appears to be the result of a committee. (OK on the rogue geologist versus the military, Mort but we also need a dying Indiana Jones plus we'll have four McGuffins, not one.) I could go on but you get the idea. See this only if you want to add more goofs to the list.

I went into this film expecting a terrible piece of film that should not ever see the light of day. It's probably because of this I actually started to enjoy it.Don't get me wrong, the special effects are as good as other bad films such as 'Boa vs Python' and 'Megashark vs Giant Octopus', some iffy acting here and there, and a bizarre plot, but somehow I started to get into it.Lexia Doig, however, despite being a good actress, always seems to make me develop a hatred for whatever character she plays. Elias Toufexis I really like and, unfortunately I can't remember who plays the FBI guy who tries to arrest Helm (played by Jeremy London), but he was the best in my opinion.There are some other downsides, such as Doig somehow hearing a beep in her van whilst inside the house, and travelling seems to take 5 minutes. Oh, and I missed the meeting when blood was classed as water.But strangely enough, despite this being a bad film, I can't stress this enough, I actually enjoyed the film. For once I will not say "ignore this", give it a chance. It's most likely a hit and miss, but it's worth a shot.

While some of the special FX aren't too bad for a movie with this budget, I cannot forgive some really poor production values which makes this film painful to watch. Let me highlight an example...one of the main guys in the film is a lieutenant, he is often referred to by his rank, he even has lieutenant bars on his collar...yet somehow he and everyone else on the movie set fails to notice he has giant corporal stripes on his arms as well. It's beyond ridiculous.The plot, very typical disaster movie, but with a sci-fi twinge. So rather than it being mother nature that will destroy the planet, it's a supernatural being wielding the power of mother nature.Suffice to say, I changed channel without watching the whole thing.Unless you really like one of the actors in this film, I can't see why anyone would want to watch it.