10.0 Earthquake

Its one of these Syfy channel productions with a cheesy comedy disaster scenario and equally cheesy special effects.

There are a series of small earthquakes tearing apart Los Angeles. Two scientists believe that it is all building to a super-quake that will drop the entire city into a lava filled basin. They show this by hitting a hammer on a car windscreen and still having to rely on bad CGI effects for this demonstration to work.

An Engineer whose company is responsible for the quakes due to their fracking activities helps the scientists with a bizarre plan to somehow divert the epic enter to a less populated area of LA and save millions of lives.

The film starts of slowly enough as the fissures lead to people disappearing in various scenarios although we get an eyeful of some lovely ladies in bikinis. There is some nice location shots of various parts of LA as the film tries to set the scene.

However we just wait and wait for the 10.0 Earthquake and get teased with some fault lines here, the Capitol Building being wrecked there but its really a poorly written film with cheap effects and a crummy plot.

I love disaster flicks often I work from home and just put them on my streaming playlist to fill the silent void as I work. I have discovered a few hidden gems using this practice, however this is not a gem, dude its a dud. David Chokachi is a decent actor wasted in this below average snooze fest. I've become accustomed to the works of the Asylum,UFO Films ,and Cinetel,enter now Marisa Films, what are these Tax Shelters? Remember back in the day low budget movies that actually tried to live up to the big guys, not anymore cheap special FX no attempt to make a quality production just sell it to one of the hundreds of worldwide TV channels and break even. Your not missing anything by not swing this movie.

When it comes to movies, there are certain grades I put things under. There's "Must see in Theaters," "Can wait for streaming," and "Possibly will play on a certain station soon." This one ranked below all of them. Sure, it could be argued that it was about the perceived dangers of fracking, but the writers clearly did no research about it, except, maybe, to look it up on Wikipedia. Sure, if there are "statements" made in movies, I can usually watch with mild interest and try and figure out what they're saying, but this was just ridiculous. We kept waiting for the big, promised finale, but it failed on this and many other levels. DNW. Do NOT Watch.

If you're looking for an Oscar winner keep on looking. But if you just want to have fun this is at least that. Just ignore the acting. Watch it with your significant other just for fun, just without any expectations. It might surprise you and you'll agree with me. If you've ever been to Los Angeles it's interesting too to see the landmarks crumble. It IS a bit campy I'll admit. But the humor will at least make you smile. Just don't expect to be rolling on the floor laughing your --- off. Sure they didn't pay much for their special effects but they weren't awful. It comes close to being an anti-fracking statement but there really wasn't any mention in the dialogue of stopping it. So don't write it off. It's fun.

Only watch this if you need a mindless movie playing in the background while you're busy doing something else. Very predictable plot, mediocre acting and direction, sub par special effects, choppy editing, etc. I gave it a 3 because it fits the bill if you're looking for a very mindless movie. You don't even have to watch it to know what happens.