Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse

I give credit to the director for trying but don't expect much. The storyline is like any other disaster movie, only difference is how the disasters come about. The special effects are terrible and you can see clearly they are computerized and transfered - hardly believable. Some of the characters got under your skin, and Christopher LLoyd - maybe it 's his age but a disappointment from his days in Back To The Future. The actors did do a nice job carrying the movie but the special effects just didn't seem to help it - in fact it made you cringe at the way some of the effects appeared. A made for TV film for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Worst special effects ever and most clichés in the book. OK so its a made for TV movie but there are some standards worth adhering to like plausibility for example yes even in a fantasy. You immediately feel sorry for Neil Martin (Joel Gretsch) that he's the father of the dumbest most self satisfied... (My University professor dad is so stupid) ...half wit in the land. A boy, Colin Martin (Reilly Dolman) with so little intuition or empathy, not to mention an annoying smirk of self satisfaction that right the first moment you are hoping he gets struck by lightening. Also this thing of the characters watching as a disaster rolls towards them when you are screaming "Run, run you dumb... 'chappie, fellows...' (you know what I mean)" is so insulting to the intelligence. Yes I can understand people freezing and dying on the spot but not almost dying because they are just too dumb to move, especially as one is a professor, "Ooh look Cleetus, duh there's a big bolder coming down from duh sky and its going to hit us if we don't duh move!" The boy rubbishes the father's every theory and suggestion. He needs a good slap!. This kid was serving coffee from a stall at the beginning of the movie with no apparent understanding of science. "Plausibility?" You'd think that the father would have had a smarter son, unless of course he was doing booze and smoking grass in his younger child creating days or at least mom was. Meanwhile they've acquired a girl called Sophie (Andrea Brooks) also a scientist... kind of, and during a chase scene, between her and the boy, they run through a gamut of hysterical physical emotions that would take most movies two hours to justify. Anyway the plot rumbles on using every cliché in the book, narrow escapes, implausibly long fights and a member of the CIA in a helicopter so small he could only just fit next to the pilot. The CIA running out of cash? Perhaps the production company was. Just what Christopher Lloyd is doing in this movie is anybody's guess, still I did enjoy his ten minutes (or thereabouts). My favourite scene in the whole thing is the very last scene, the tying up of loose ends where Joel Gretsch makes a speech to camera meanwhile behind him, his son and the girl who have shown virtually no interest in each other, suddenly make meaningful eye contact - if you know what I mean - and go into an immediate embrace behind him thrusting their tongues down each other's throats. THAT had me rolling in the aisles. Truth be told, it was a lousy script and a tight budget that did for this movie..... in my opinion.

Considering that he is the most well-known and most experienced actor in the cast by some distance you'd think he would be. Lloyd really gives his all and the eccentric kind of character is one that would have suited him perfectly. Unfortunately Lloyd's screen time is far too limited to save the movie and while he is fun in places- more than his trashy material deserved- he badly over-compensates in others, which really sticks out like a sore thumb. The best performance In Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse actually comes from Joel Gretsch, he is a commanding lead and certainly doesn't look at any time look like he's confused or in pain. And Ben Cotton is pretty endearing and makes a real effort to make Marty likable; in fact Marty is like the bright spot when it comes to the characters. Unlike the rest of the cast they actually try to act.

That's very much it for things that redeemed Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse a little. Gretsch and Cotton are good and Lloyd tries but the movie on the whole is very badly acted- Emily Holmes attempts at being frightened or emotional came over as forced, Andrea Brooks is so annoying to the extent you want to reach into the TV and slap her and Aaron Douglas doesn't even try to act as the very stereotypical and painfully forgettable villain. Everybody else looked stiff and bored. The cardboard cut-outs passing for characters are as thin as paper, with only Marty showing glimpses of colour, and the actors are further disadvantaged by a clunky script, with a number of lines so cheesy that it makes the cheesiest cheeseburger seem tasteless, that gives off the sense of parody without the humour(got a laugh out of Sophie's line about her homework but that was not in a good way). As well as a story that is filled to the brim with so many clichés(with nothing fresh done with them, characters and situations) that the intense predictability severely dilutes the suspense and fun, also the further the movie wears on the sillier and more tedious it gets.

Production values are not much better at all, in fact one of the worst things here was the special effects which were half-baked at best and laughably amateurish at worst, the disaster scenes are ruined by how cheap they look and how much unintentional humour they cause. It was abundantly clear that more effort went into the making of the promising DVD cover than to the special effects, the DVD cover at least showed some professionalism whereas the effects were borderline hack-job. The colourless and one-dimensional camera work and lacking-in-crispness editing don't fare quite as badly but they don't improve things either, while the whole movie whether in the un-thrilling disaster scenes or the heavy-handed drama suffered from some rather characterless under-directing. The sound effects have a booming sensation but not in a way that thrills, in fact some of it's headache-inducing, while the score is over-bearingly melodramatic and monotonous. Overall, Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse is nowhere near the worst SyFy has done, but aside from two performances and the efforts from Lloyd it just doesn't work. 3/10 Bethany Cox

If you prefer to watch a popcorn movie where you can plug off your brain than just give it a try.

After i watched it i ask my self why i spend the time of my life for this movie ?

I like Science Fiction Movies and the topic Niburu in General.

The Movie is very scripted and the Watcher will not be surprised very well.

Only the Actor Joel Gretsch plays his role very well.

I liked Aaron Douglas in his Role in Battlestar Galactica, but in this movie its the worst acting that i have see from him.

Spend your time on a other movie.

"Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" is a very generic and stereotypical disaster movie that follows the dummies handbook of how to make a disaster movie. Everything in the movie was so predictable and scripted that you saw it coming a mile away. And this really brought down the overall enjoyment of the movie.

Sure, the movie was entertaining enough for what it is, but if you have seen any other disaster movie, then you basically have seen this one as well - in theory.

The story is about a series of disasters that happen around the world, and the future of the entire planet rests in the hands of a few people that run against time to save the Earth.

Yeah, basically the same as most other disaster movies. And for some odd reason all these events were happening all around these people. It just didn't make sense. Why would all these cataclysmic events take place around these and not at random locations around the world? Effects-wise, then "Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" was adequate. The effects worked well enough for what they were supposed to portray. But they weren't mind-blowing or overly impressive. So don't get your hopes up for these.

As for the acting, well people were doing good enough jobs with their given roles. Joel Gretch was the one who carried the movie, no doubt about it.

"Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" is a very average run-of-the-mill disaster movie that offers nothing new to the genre. You watch this movie once and never again.