10.5: Apocalypse

This certainly was better than I expected from Filmrise, and considering it is a TV miniseries, I expected it was designed to give excitement, danger and entertainment. And that is about all it was. It is full of cliches, as if they ran down a check list of what audiences might expect. They wrap it in pseudo-science terms, and naturally have a discredited scientist as the person who is the one who can explain what is happening. There currently are major film franchises that have action as far fetched as in this series, and they make a lot of money. Even when they were supposed to be witnessing actual locations, they failed. King's Peak in Utah is nothing like they pretended to show. And they laid on the drama by having some take risks that no sane person would ever do just to keep up the excitement for the audience. They threw in a lot of shouting and screaming in the third installment for good measure. In the trapped scene in the Las Vegas casino, when it was insisted they had to go up to get out, it reminded me of a certain movie about an overturned ocean liner.

scientific credibility, you might think that the producers would have at least done a good job filming this.

Alas, no. The CGI are good for a TV film, which isn't saying much, but the ENTIRE film (virtually every scene) is filmed in that modern, irritating "zoom-o-matic" style of cinematography. In order to lend a sense of action or reality, the camera zooms in or out every few seconds. The whole film looks like Uncle Ernie trying his new 8 mm camera out at Christmas, 1978. I timed one shot of the President's daughter talking to a doctor. It was 8 seconds long and had 5 zooms in it.

A very, very dumb film made very, very poorly.

It is said that if you gave a thousand monkeys typewriters, eventually they will write Shakespeare... Guess what. They aren't done yet.

This movie or for those into PURE science fiction. Things that happen in this movie could only happen in a fantasy world. They should have added a laugh track and called it a comedy. I wish writers would try to write a disaster movie based on something that could really happen, but turn it up just a bit. A 10.5 earthquake sounds horrific (which it would be) but the things that they lead you to believe that could happen if there were one is just too far out there.

The only reason to watch this is to see the CGI.

This movie is not even remotely scientifically accurate. I'm pretty sure the writers haven't even passed basic high school earth science nor ever watched a PBS documentary on earthquakes to have gotten pretty much everything wrong. There are also many, many moments that were beyond even basic common sense, and I was yelling at my TV. The acting was pretty decent, and the actors were gorgeous and/or stately. Some of the lines were pure cheese, however. However, it's far from being the worse disaster movie or mini-series that I've ever seen, and it was a decent enough way to send a few hours on a rainy day. Don't expect to learn anything about a) science, b) surviving a disaster, or c) health care, and take it for what it is: escapist fantasy.

What is wrong with director John Lafia? Any chance of this film being any good was destroyed by the constant zoom in and zoom out. I have not seen many home movies filmed this bad. The constant zooming was so annoying that after an hour I had to turn it off. Of the hour I did watch the acting and dialog was unbearable. I really can't say if it got any better but the first hour was dreadful!

What is wrong with the directors in Hollywood now days? Why do they insist that all action scenes need to be filmed with a shaking camera or zooming all over the place (like MI:3)?

I liked the old days when good acting and action carried the scene not the blurred shaky camera work of today!