Alien Tornado (2012)

Giving a bad review to a SyFy movie is not really a challenge. It's so blatantly obvious thing to do that one has to think twice if it is even worth the time to type the bashing these films more often than not deserve. I'm beginning to feel like this is SyFy's strategy: keep churning out junk under the guise of light entertainment, because there are enough people that kinda enjoy passing their time watching these films and then there are those, like myself, who end up watching these in hopes something has changed.Nothing has changed here. The images and the characters both are flat, the CGI is sub-par, and the script would again benefit from proofreading. Not that I don't trust the writers' English skills, but maybe a few more brains in the works would help in creating more passable builds of suspense, more pronounced motivations for characters etc. You know, a bit more oomph than tornadoes that are of alien origin coupled with the stock characters one can expect in such circumstances.I've seen worse acting, and I've spent my time more foolishly, but to say that seeing a certain film is NOT the stupidest thing one can do is not really a compliment, now is it?

At least this movie was watchable and maybe even re-watchable, which is more than I can say for many Hollywood "A" pictures. The core idea of Alien Tornado was good and even somewhat original: Aliens invade Earth with something other than spaceships and death-rays. Given that setup and SyFy's regular treatment, it's a mildly entertaining entry with some fun bits here and there. Again, more than can be said for certain top-rated movies.Jeff Fahey from Lost and Kari Wuhrer from Sliders were good enough for the material and I enjoyed their performances, though the director might have rushed through some scenes. No, the effects weren't great but, in my opinion, they were effective which is all I expect effects to be.As for the screenplay, characters and dialogue I've got news for you: most big-budget blockbusters start out like this. The producers then bring in the high-powered script doctors to fix everything up, change or remove characters, make the "science" sound more believable, tweak dialogue into something resembling human speech. SyFy budgets don't allow for this so what we end up seeing feels like a first draft -- which is what it is, probably.

We all know the drill on SyFy channel movies. You can't compare them to anything other than previous SyFy channel movies. With shoestring budgets and B & C grade actors (mostly C), they crank out their "original" movies with regularity and zero surprises.Alien Tornado did not break this tradition. This one was just slightly on the low side of the scale. The script was ridiculous, the characters thoroughly unappealing (I'm used to that), and the CGI SFX were only average. Now that home PC's with the latest processors can do the third level CGI that SyFy utilizes, you'd think they'd use the savings to ramp up the writing or actor expenditures. They don't. This one didn't even have any former stars in a cameo role.The only reason to watch these things is because you're stuck at home and nothing else is on. And, of course, because you can figure out the plot by the first commercial break, and after that you can leave the room for a few minutes at any time and not worry about missing anything vital to the story.This one was so completely silly and contrived that even hard core fans of SyFy movies will be disappointed. Not to worry. They'll be punching out another one in a few weeks. Ice Twisters vs. Alien Tornado perhaps? Paul Birkett wrote both. You know he's thinking about it.{EDIT: On May 2nd 2012, this movie already had a name change. I guess the producers didn't like our IMDb comments.}

I can't believe this got funded to produce. Bad acting, predictable dialog, poor script, and terrible cgi. I'm used to pure dribble from the SciFi network but this is so bad I couldn't watch it at all. It tries to be the X-files but is as trite, cliché ridden as I have ever seen. Avoid this as at all costs, pure waste of time. Everyone involved with this project should be deeply embarrassed. I plead the 5th--the 5th of bourbon it would it take me to get numb enough to sit through this crap. It has no redeeming values whatsoever. Who would even want to promote this? A Smurfs marathon could only rot your brain worse. I never write reviews but I couldn't be silent on this one.