Éruption L.A

Horrendous excuse of a movie. Script, acting and special FX are worst I have ever seen. There are movies from the 60s that had better FX. Main actor dude was just utterly embarrasing.

OK so bottom line - this isn't a very good film. That's mainly down to the special effects admittedly, but not entirely. Some of the performances are decent (Tom Schanley is particularly good and believable) but unfortunately some really aren't.

That said, despite it not being a good film I still enjoyed it. If you can ignore the terrible effects, clearly done on a very strict budget, then it's a fun disaster movie. Most disaster movies are best watched with your brain mostly turned off anyway, and that's the best way to watch this one too.

A typical B-movie disaster flick. Our intrepid renegade heroes try to convince the disbelieving authorities of their plan to no avail. The heroine is a random washed up B-movie actress so plenty of in-jokes and self-referencing. Cheesy CGI effects and an action climax. Don't bother.

I love watching bad movies just for the laughs. This is up there with Sharknado :))

I just finished watching Shockwave - Countdown to Disaster (2017) and I'm pretty sure this film used the same lame SFX people, only this films SFX were a little better than the latter.

Novice director and writer Sean Cain (primarily experienced as a film editor according to his IMDb resume) did a fairly decent job in both departments considering his lack of experience.

All the B & C grade actors were surprisingly convincing in their roles, except in the last 15 mins of the film, where the acting got a little laxed, cheesy and unconvincing, especially the Russian bodyguard and his clearly fake accent.

It seemed the writing and directing were also off towards the end as well - seemed rushed, maybe due to time and budget constraints.

Overall, I've seen worse B-grade films and also a handful better ones. This was in the middle, although the acting was much stronger, but the poor SFX dropped it down a notch or two for me. Had the producers invested a little more in that department, or even find some SFX/VFX final-year student with skills (so many out there) that would have created 10x better effects (probably for free just to have their name in the credits), this B-grade film would have been a winner for me.

Would I see it again or recommend it? Nope. Did I still enjoy it? Sure. It's a 6/10 from me... primarily for the decent acting and interesting story.