Within the Rock

In a nut shell, this is quite the good movie for a low budget film. Theis crew hit all the right buttons, and with a bit more budget could easily have ranked higher.

My biggest marker, the script, was very solid. All the actors were given believable, appropriate dialog. The actors, with a few very recognizable names, nailed their parts, without trying to go overboard or out an appropriate character expectation. As a low budget movie their sets were limited and the creature wasn't extreme, but neither were any of them shoddy. The direction and scene setup were well thought through. All in all a SOLID performance by every segment of the cast and team.

I received this movie from a friend, claiming that it was a great movie I couldn't afford to miss. I asked him what it was about, and he said the story involved rock aliens, which immediately attracted my interest. After watching it, I thought the movie was average in every aspect, but leaning more towards the 'bad' side.

The movie is about a huge asteroid heading towards good ol' Earth, and (not to the viewer's surprise) people are sent up in a space ship to drill the asteroid to pieces. The spaceship "Galileo's Child" is a cheap piece of plastic, which they have projected onto the Windows 95 Starfield screensaver to create the flight-through-space scenes. That's the way it looks like. Aboard the ship are the typical bad ass "space pirates" plus a "misunderstood" scientist played by Caroline Barclay. They land on the red asteroid (which looks like a floating meatball) and start drilling away. With big drills. There is no logic in this, however.

This movie is set in the far future, so why not have automated drills, so they don't need to spend money on oxygen canisters etc. "Because then there'd be no killing scenes." Oh boy.

But hell is set loose when on the 3rd day (I think), the guys stumble across a grave filled with artifacts and other styrofoam crap. Of course, everybody (except the 'cool' scientist) goes nuts and start stealing the valuable alien plastic, but OH NO, the ancient guard of the stone grave is resurrected, to protect the grave from Zzzzz...

I won't tell you about the rest, but it is all so predictable. Most of the scenes are blatantly "ALIEN" rip-offs, and it all happens so slooowly, that the scenes get boring. There's only one good kill scene, and that's where one of the bad asses gets a drill through her head. Slowly, too - but painful. The alien itself looks like a walking piece of styrofoam rock. And it looks happy the whole time.

Even though it has it's extremely bad moments, the movie is enjoyable at times. The actors are complete crap, so you'll love it when they die. DIE.

Overall: 4/10

I can't judge this film using normal reviewing techniques, because it's not a big budget, Armageddon type film that will comepletely blow you away. What it is is a mildley entertaining, fun-for-anyone-after-a-completely-undemanding-film-sort-of movie. Given millions of dollars and time, this would have been a spectacular, if completely un-original, dim-bulb film. But it's not. It was probably filmed over a month or less, for about a million dollars. For that, it's pretty damn good! It had a good script, with only one scene of bad dialogue towards the end (just think the worst, oldest cliche). Just goes to show that all you need is one talented person to start a film (I mean this films Writer/Director, who obviously knew what he was doing) and you'll end up with something respectable. 6/10 or ***/*****

Apparently some people are not used to made for TV movies. Possibly too young- they were everywhere in the late 60's and into the 70's. They do not have a huge F/X budget like Star Wars, Close Encounters of the 3'rd Kind, or Superman, etc. However, Within the Rock is way above the Sci-Fi 'B' movies of the 50's and 60's.

As to the plot, NASA and quite a few world governments are concerned about the possibility of a 'rogue' celestial body impacting our planet. A few years back, an object passed within something like less than a million miles of Earth- on a galactic scale, this is approximately next door. And, let's not forget the extinction level event that occurred 65 million years ago, that left iridium layers that are bigger than any other found on this planet ,and coincidentally occurred when dinosaurs became extinct.

The actors by and large were fine- sci-fi is not Shakespeare. If I wanted to watch Shakespeare, that's what I would be watching.

I liked this movie and recommended it to my sister.

Its cheap. The effects, the actors, everything on low budget. However, the script and direction are is quite good - compared to Michael Bay's Armageddon, which is extremely lame and boring once you leave out all the expensive effects and high-pay actors. Heck, it is even _with_ them, if your mind happens to wake up during the show. In contrast, this movie is original (in parts), it's refreshing low on pathos, and by far less expensive in production. I'd chose it over Armageddon anytime.

The alien sidestory is obvious, and OK. I hope director and writer Mr. Tunicliffe, whose other works are primarily in the special make-up department, will find time to hone his directing and writing abilities. There's potential, but he needs training.

Not bad for his first script and direction! 6/10, especially in comparison with Armageddon