The Storm

This show was not as bad as some of the reviews I read. It was better than Meteor. Must be hiring better writers and crews each film. I liked the second part much better. Seemed to settle into the story and answer my questions from the first half. True, music was distracting at times.It felt like to much info crammed into first half.Could use less split screens effect for my taste. Effects reminded me of the Boeing Satellite systems being used now. I thought Terrell was overacted. He tried to hard to be a villain. I liked the other performances. The stories message was clear change the balance of nature and the world could pay.

Not only is this film completely unwatchable and morally depraved...it WAS made with scab labor. The workers on the production went on strike for fair wages and benefits like the actors and production people were getting. It was refused to them and they were locked out. Everyday the union actors drove past the former crew and new crew members were transported in blacked out vans. I believe the quality suffered quite dramatically. They shot the majority of the rest of the shoot in one location inside guarded gates. This film is very badly made and I think it is a fair review to look at what happened during the making of it.

A previous reviewer made false claims of what happened I believe to mislead people... I don't think it is a coincidence that he shares the same name as an actor in the film.

Even though there are a lot of movies or miniseries out there created on a low-budget, they often can surprise you by having a good script, acting or an original story line. Specially in the sci-fi genre, where you can get more extreme in the fantasy part, I tend to give a movie more slack.

This mini-series however annoyed me after the first 10 minutes. The idea starts out OK, a secret military project has created a device to manipulate the weather. Early in the start of the series it gets activated and it will be obvious to you that you can find better special effects on you-tube made by 10-year old. OK, bad effects, I can live with that.

Then it all gets worse, a lot of characters get introduced which totally do not contribute to the story in any way. They needed a setting to show us how this bad weather effects the general public, so they introduce not 1 or 2 but 3 complete side-stories which could have been taking from any bad drama series on TV. In addition, the editing was so terrible that they pasted the scenes of the boredom after each other, letting you watch up to 20 minutes to irrelevant stories. The worse of these being a woman of course who is pregnant and gets trapped in a nasty place..guess what happens.

The second part that annoyed me is that this movie did not get any (or very bad) review before actually shooting it. Any film student could have filtered out the cliché parts, bad sequencing and put a more scientific realistic view to this concept. They most likely would have done it for free.

But then the worst part. The actors that accepted a role for this piece of crap. They often do not realize the damage they cause to their own career, instead it's only the money they are interested in.

Luke Perry: Maybe not my biggest fan as 90210 certainly is not my genre but still, I've seen him take on some pretty good roles for example The 5th Element and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He has set a certain standard in the movie industry for himself. A standard we come to expect when advertising a movie featuring him. I'm pretty sure he didn't even read the script, such fail.

James van Der Beek: Maybe the only one that took his seriously. The character he portraits has potential, maybe not completely original but non the less, it could have made a fine character for any SF series. I feel his disappointment in ever excepting this role.

David James Elliott and his JAG buddy Patrick Labyorteaux: I guess their JAG money ran out. Again actors, stop taking roles blindly just for the money, you can do better than this.

All together: bad directing, mediocre acting, very bad script, worst editing and terrible effects. All on a very promising idea.

I'm shocked at the average rating for this movie/mini series. It's fantastic, and I'm not just saying that because David James Elliott is in it.

The only other comment I read about this "mini-series" was woefully incorrect. The poster stated that this was made during the writers strike with "scab labor". That is very wrong. This was made a year after the writers strike, late winter 2009 and used mostly union actors. I think for the budget they were working with they did a creative job. Every production isn't going to be 'Gone with the wind', a cable mini-series is just what you got here. No more, no less. It is easy to bash productions but give them a break here. I was very surprised at the names that were in this. There were some obvious stretches of the imagination here, but if you suspend your disbelief you can get through this just fine and be mildly entertained in the process.