Astéroïde

When the sun converts to a magnetar for a short time, the planet Mercury is thrown out of orbit (along with a spaceship exploring it) and set on a collision course for Earth.

I am officially declaring Paul Ziller the king of the 21st Century B-Movie Directors, taking the crown away from Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski (who shared it). His output of "Ice Quake" and "Stonehenge Apocalypse", among others, suggests he has mastered the end-of-the-world science fiction film.

This film goes above and beyond the sheer level of scientific nonsense previously seen in the movies. The Sun being turned into a magnetar? A space shuttle exploring Mercury (apparently today, not in the future)? A pirate radio reaching a space craft when no one else can?

And then you have the special effects, which rank among the other SyFy films for the worst (though I caught hints that maybe they are getting better). Throw in multiple action scenes with guns and knives (who knew that being an astronomer was so exciting?) and you have a Ziller masterpiece.

There isn't one bit of remote possibility to this Science-Fiction and that automatically takes it to that arena of the absurd and lands it in a place called Hooterville. Almost every scene has a defiance of known Physics. So don't check your brain at the door, pull it from your skull and throw it on the floor and stomp it into mush.

OK, now you may be able to enjoy this Apocalyptic story that is nothing if not full of one crazy concept after another. People die horribly but no one seems to care, there are bigger fish frying, namely our planet. This badly acted Made-for-TV Movie cannot be faulted for trying to be exciting for it has many cliffhangers. It is all done with TV style CGI that is colorful, but shoddy.

You may find yourself actually rooting for more deaths and perhaps even an atypical ending of the title coming true. But it seems the wrong ones die and Earth is not one of them. This would have been so much better if it did and might have made this worth a view. If you like them bombastically BAD you're gonna love this one.

Normally I'm super critical of this type of film. In this case, however, there are some redeeming qualities that drew me in (partially anyway). Sure, the script needs tidying up and the scientific errors are a little distracting. But the acting is basically sound and believable with some good character development (Matthew in particular). Special effects are largely very nice.

I would say, as it stands, it could hold its own with most episodes in the Stargate franchise. With not too much work, there is the makings of a decent film here.

The question is, who approved it in its present state and why? It could have been so much better with so little work.

Here we have another low rent disaster flick produced by the SyFy Channel. This one has to be seen to be believed as the writers craft a scenario that would only ever have been halfway believable on a massive budget. As it stands this Canadian production only had about $10 to play with so the result is less than effective, shall we say.

Still, I found this one to be a neat slice of so-bad-it's-good entertainment, and much of it is a right laugh. The story sees Mercury somehow going out of orbit and heading towards earth, so a renegade scientist has to do his best to figure out how to stop a whole planet approaching the earth. Meanwhile there's a lot of 'magnetic' disaster going on, in which cars are pulled up into the air before being dumped unceremoniously back down to Earth.

Lead actor Kirk Acevedo (THE WALKING DEAD) is a real hoot in this one. He starts out looking mildly concerned and his single expression gradually deepens to all-out worry as the story progresses. I've never seen an actor look so worried in a film, he must have added about a hundred frown lines to his face just from acting in this. The CGI effects of floating cars are absolutely laughable and cracked me up every time they were on screen; my favourite bit is the tractor scene which I had to rewind just to check out how rubbish it was.

How do you describe this film? Agony. Stupid. Dumb. Amateurish.

First, it takes place in a time when we have a space ship exploring Mercury. And we have a gigantic ship in orbit capable of creating a giant magnetic pulse. Yet is is set in the present, with flip cell phones and old cars. There was no attempt to set this in the future. Why? I guess it would have been too expensive.

Second, the story is just dumb. Mercury has been thrown out of orbit and it is heading towards Earth. Some former scientist who has been fired by the government, who's wife just happens to be on the ship around Mercury, has to save the planet, even though he is being hunted by the government.

Third, the special effects are not even as good as in the 1950's B films. Green screen shots that are so obvious that a third grader could do better.

And finally, the acting that is, well, again, a third grader in a school play would be better.

Enough. I am angry that I wasted the 90 minutes watching this thing and the 10 minutes writing this review. Save yourself. Turn your TV off and just stare at the blank screen for 90 minutes. You will enjoy that more.