Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor

Evil enchantress Hell is planning to destroy the world. This will also have consequence in the godly kingdom of Asgard, namely bring Ragnarok (destruction of godly realm) upon them. But humans in Midgard (earth) no longer worships the gods, so gods themselves cannot intervene in their affairs. The solution is to give the great descendant of Thor Grant Farrel a Thor like power to battle the forces of darkness.

If you watch this movie, you'll notice that it's not a high budget, but everything else is high production. The story, the screenplay, the acting are all above par. What's most surprising is that unlike most B movies that rely on shtik to keep the story going, this movie keeps excitement from start to finish without any.

I have to say that I was pretty impressed, and was entertained. Keep up the good work guys, and 'hope you'll have opportunity to make bigger budget movie next time around.

OK, no awards could ever be given for this movie. Also, I would never want to 'spoil' anyone's experience of this film by revealing plot details, but I will let all know that this does not come from a comic book, which movies I often enjoy. I think the comic elements are unintentional, sort of like 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians' is. Or possibly it's more early Whovian, with good vs evil. At least, in its amusing awfulness, it is sort of, kind of, original. And the categories are: Sound--I think there was some taping of audio in a toilet. It sometimes had that 'hollow' sound to it. Lighting--Fluorescent works well, so go with it. (Sarcasm) Actually some scenes were better lit than others. Screenplay--dialogue so poor it seems as if just everyone was miscast. No one could pull off the dialogue, especially with these actors. Costumes--off the rack Canadian gear. There are costumes for a few characters. Editing--It looks as if there is only one camera, so it cuts back and forth--a lot. Casting--looks like friends and family. or maybe fellow students. Music--has original music at least. Cinematography--sadly lacking. Anyway, this is a terrible movie with great entertainment values. You might throw popcorn at the screen though.

Over the top acting abounds!

That does sound unfair and like a joke, but actually this is meant in all seriousness. There is no personal prejudice against low-budget movies, there are some entertaining ones out there and it's always something I take into account as someone who strives to see good things in something that's overall bad.

However with Thunderstorm: Return of Thor the problem is that it looks like little effort was put into making it. From the synopsis it could have had some potential to be a little bit of guilty-pleasure fun and the DVD cover was cool. From watching the movie though, things were disastrous right away with the almost endless Star Wars-esque opening title sequence that consists of inappropriately cheesy music that is so intrusive it practically drowns out everything else and stiltedly written narration that sounds like it was recorded from the world's deepest well with the most reverberant acoustic. Saying that the movie looks cheap is being kind because it takes the phrase total ineptitude to insulting heights, with laughable special effects(with a supposed dragon that looked anything but one), drab lighting, costume-party-leftover costumes, pointless overuse shots of buildings and simplistic sets that don't resemble at all what they were meant to be(i.e. the hospital). Apparently most of the money went into the Thunderstorm suit, that didn't really show because the suit wouldn't even pass for a suit for anything let alone a superhero one.

The music is very ill-fitting and grates on the ears. The way it's recorded also plays a large part, because the sound quality is very hollow and sometimes has an echoey, slow-motion ambiance effect that came over as uncomfortably weird than effective. Thunderstorm: Return of Thor's writing is truly horrendous, Evans's lines and the line delivery have to be heard to be believed, some might say it'll bring unintentional humour for me actually it verged on embarrassment. Any "heartfelt" moments like the eulogy looked and sounded so improvisatory judging from the start-stop-start flow of it. The story is barely there and leaves one's brain in a muddle thinking about it, also padded with confusedly choreographed, sloppily edited and half-heartedly performed fight scenes(i.e. the kung fu battle between Glenda and Evan), flabby pacing and scenes reeking of mind-numbing stupidity that are impossible to be taken at face value.

Its direction borders on incompetent, the lead has no charisma or personality and the villains are so hammy they are more obnoxious than sinister. The acting is dreadful, with the emotionless Ray Besharah and embarrassingly over-the-top Jody Hauke faring the worst, though an out-of-her-depth Celine Filion and a forced Gabrielle MacKenzie fare little better if thankfully not as bad. To conclude, cool DVD cover but the movie itself an abomination with no redeeming merits. 0/10 Bethany Cox