Erdbeben - Wenn die Erde sich öffnet...

Ho-Dee-Ho, what should I have expected? I bought this TV drama on DVD for under 5 dollars so could I be disappointed, really? No, I wasn't and I'm afraid the standard low brow for midget minds situational disaster flick formula is in force here.

A family with teenage kids. The daughter looks like a slut, but so what? An improbable situation, a divorced American family in Russia, where Dad is an engineer, but his wife appears to have most of the smarts.

What can be said formula take over. Family divorced, and kids think Mom was a douche bag for divorcing Pop. We never learn why they were divorced or why the kids and ex are in Russia to begin with.

No matter an earthquake strikes where golly, you would think, the Russians would think maybe it wouldn't. Dumb Russies.

The rest is pablum for a 90 minute occasional glance at the screen to be sure your movie smeller didn't predict way ahead how it would end.

The brave young and arrogant 17 year old heart throb, the Artie- terribly trashy looking daughter, the very smart Mom who immediately sees a circuit board needs resistors bypassed with her cast off wedding ring.

Oh, well, you'll find this flick plays well and probably isn't a total disaster if you buy the DVD for under 3 dollars. I want a partial refund on what I paid.

I was surprised to note that the film was released in 2004; it has a very "1960's" European feel in look and soundtrack. None of the supposedly US characters looks or sounds American; the hairstyles and clothes, again, are very retro and much of the dialog appears to have been looped--without the appropriate background noise! None of this would matter if the conflicts or characters were involving--but the action is very formulaic and the acting poor.It certainly is difficult to come up with new approaches to disaster-type scenarios on limited budgets, but "China Syndrome" and countless earthquake films have already been done. As the Bible--and Spielberg in his Oscar acceptance speech--said: "In the beginning was the word..." With or without a significant budget, there first needs to be decent script, and this one just doesn't work. If the creators of Mystery Theater 3000 were still doing their magic, this film would be a perfect candidate for parody.

Well, sure, I was lured in to watching the 2005 natural disaster movie "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" here in 2021. And it was because of the movie's cover, it being a natural disaster movie, and also because it was movie that I hadn't already seen, that I sat down to watch this 2005 movie from writer Andy Hurst and director Tibor Takács.

And there shall be no doubt about this when I say that "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" was by no means a great movie. In fact, the movie's cover was actually the best part about the entire feature. Sad as that may be.

Yeah, the storyline was pretty generic, even for a natural disaster movie. So there wasn't much of any overly interesting entertainment factors to be had here. The whole movie was as predictable as it was generic.

It should be said, though, that some of the scenes with the disaster wrecked by the earthquake tremors weren't actually all that bad. But then on the other hand there were scenes of the same kind that was just downright laughable and painful to witness. Most of the scenes during the quakes just didn't have enough sense of chaos and destruction to it, which ultimately lead to some rather unconvincing scenes, which made the movie suffer terribly. Especially since a natural disaster movie needs to have impact, impressive CGI scenes and lots of edge-of-the-seat moments to capture the audience. That just wasn't present in the 2005 movie "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake".

And it didn't really help much that the characters in the movie were written as generic, wooden and rigid, most of which you don't even really care about one ounce.

All in all, then "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" was a rather forgettable movie and a very stale experience for a natural disaster movie. I would actually recommend that you don't waste your time, money or effort on this 2005 movie, because it really wasn't worth it.

My rating of "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

This is a rant, because I've just wasted time looking at another film and I'm sick of what I'm seeing:

Divorced and or on the verge of divorce scientist couples squabbling (One of the reasons I loved Locusts the 8th Plague cause it depicted a harmonious (sp) couple by and large; wow it can be done!)? And I notice no one ever pulls the one who's the co-worker aside to implore him/her to focus on what they're hired to do and push the personal history mess in the back of their heads!

Kids more likable and mature than the adults? I absolutely hated Miss Arrogant Female Scientist until the last half hour of this movie. The husband was a little more likable but after the way she addressed him in one scene; Oh My God, a self-respecting man would either, one, tell her to live with him being there or better yet call for a replacement for this job and get the first plane out of Russia.

A someone in the installation pushing for a deadline, thus causing errors which bring about the film's major catastrophe?

Kid--The couples kid--why can't this be a child they don't know?--hopelessly trapped calling for parent?

And this channel has the nerve to dub these things "an original movie"?????

Sci-Fi I beg the powers that be, hire someone, anyone, who can be more creative and dream up more exciting scenarios for these original films--Oh that can be anybody, just about anybody from the age of 10 up. Thank you.

I read everyone else's reviews & comments and I disagree with them all. First, this is not a ho-hum, boring movie. An earthquake cripples a Russian power plant threatening a meltdown, and it's a race against time to avert the disaster. Add into the mix a Russian supervisor who refuses to accept the idea of anything wrong, and will stop at nothing to keep the truth from getting out, even if it means locking the engineer near the core, and trying to run away when confronted with the truth. That is very believable. This movie is well-paced, and doesn't take long to get started. And once it gets going, you're on a roller-coaster ride of suspense. The scene in the elevator shaft reminds me of the suspense in TOWERING INFERNO and POSEIDON ADVENTURE. The kids are very believable American youngsters trying to deal with their parents' separation, and fate forces them to work together. Maybe it's all cliché, maybe not. But I like this movie. Maybe the special effects were taken from DANTE'S PEAK, I don't know. Frankly, I don't care, since they're very brief and quick. Only when scenes are obviously stolen from other movies do I care, like when they stole footage from AIRPORT 1975 to create SONIC IMPACT. But try it yourself. You may be surprised.