Earthtastrophe

Of course I had never heard about this 2016 movie prior to sitting down and watching it. I happened to come across it by random chance here in 2024 and opted to sit down and give the movie a fair chance. I have to admit, though, that I wasn't harboring much of any hopes or expectations to the movie, given the laughable title that the movie had.

But I still opted to give the movie a fair chance and the benefit of the doubt.

And not even a minute into the movie it became painstakingly clear that this movie was going to suck. The special effects were dubius and laughable. But hey, at least the effects matched the title, and that has got to count for something, right?

Writer Ashley O'Neil put together an insanely generic script. The cataclysmic events in the movie just made zero sense, and it were glanced over with far too much irrelevance. The audience is left with a sense of 'seriously?' as the movie progress and the pointless narrative trotted on and on.

I have to say that the narrative spiraled more and more out of control and went from strange to absurd and laughable as the movie progressed. This whole thing was a dumpster fire.

Of the entire cast ensemble in the movie, I was only familiar with Brian Krause. I will say that the most of the acting performances throughout the course of the movie were fair. Nothing great or memorable, mind you. But taking into consideration the contents of the script and the character gallery, or rather lack thereof, then the actors and actresses actually faired well enough.

Visually then you're not in for anything grand. At least they tried, and that counts for something. But the effects in the movie were pretty bad. And for a movie made in 2016, it looked and felt like something that found its way out of the 1990s.

If you enjoy disaster movies, then do yourself a favor and skip on spending, well rather wasting, 82 minutes on "Earthtastrophe". It just simply wasn't worth the effort. Some of us suffered through this so you don't have to. You're very welcome.

How "Earthtastrophe" has managed to lande a 3.7 rating here on IMDb, in the very moment I am writing this review, is just simply beyond my comprehension.

My rating of director Nick Lyon's 2016 movie "Earthtastrophe" lands on a generous two out of ten stars.

I love cheesy disaster movies, and found this one to be not so-bad-it's-good, but better than I expected. It's good enough for me to wish it had been better, mind you. I think it maybe needed some more money thrown at it. At any rate, they did well with what they had. It has decent acting, even some pretty good acting. The special effects range from not-so-great, to quite convincing. It's full of interesting ideas, and things that I haven't seen in other movies, including blockbuster 'Hollywood' type movies. Not a waste of time!

This movie is bad, but I expected that going in. I'd say its biggest problem is poor character development, basically you don't care for anyone. Its great strength is the refreshing tho maybe a bit overly ambitious story-line which puts much larger productions to shame. Not sure if it's all Ashley O'Neil's contribution but will check her other work.

CGI is, as expected, amateurish, and there are some smaller problems with acting (or maybe director instructing actors) but nothing really horrendous like in similar budget movies. Everyone from the crew should be proud and continue bringing us new projects.

For all of you folks out there who like this movie it just means you get the genre not not everybody does.

Have said many times about not having a bias against modest/low budget films. There have been films that are hindered by budget but still manage to be halfway decent or more because other elements are done reasonably well at least. Budget hindrances for me are not, or shouldn't be, an excuse for anything to be low quality or amateurish, when a film or such doesn't try that's when it is rated low and negatively reviewed.

'Earthtastrophe' though is not one of those films that doesn't try, although a lot of elements are badly executed there are degrees of effort which is why it hasn't been rated any lower. If anything, 'Earthtastrophe' is instead an example of a film that tries too hard and bites off more than it could chew. It has a great and very ambitious idea for a story, but sadly didn't have the budget, resources or the right people to pull it off. There was a lot of potential in the film that wasn't completely wasted but wasn't lived up to.

There is not an awful lot that 'Earthtastrophe' does right sadly and there is a lot wrong, but there are fleeting "okay" moments/elements. The best, or least bad, thing about the film is the photography, which wasn't incoherent and didn't look too drab, not great but have seen worse.

Scenery was pretty nice and had some atmosphere, and the music was listenable and fitted better than the music featured in most disaster films.

Conversely, the special effects are less than special and that's being kind, they are poorly modelled and fail to blend with everything else, plus some are used gratuitously. The actors struggle to do anything interesting with their characters and give performances that either sees them giving too much that it becomes hammy or are stiff and going through the motions. To be fair though the characters are sketchily, to put it lightly, written and severely underdeveloped, with personalities that range between annoyingly shallow or completely dull. Unclear motivations and illogical decision making (bugbears of mine in film) are other reasons why one can't care for any of the characters. The direction is pretty leaden.

Furthermore, the script never sounds natural and further suffers from being vague to the point of being incomprehensible, especially in trying to figure out who is who and what is what, and very repetitive. Do agree that the flashbacks did irritate, there were too many of them and generally they added very little. The story was an ambitious one, but it ended up feeling over-ambitious because the storytelling here was anaemic at best and even more confused and vague as the script, with too many things left unclear and the structure being a jumpy mess. There is no tension or suspense and the fun and energy is completely sucked out, down to everything being taken too seriously and a cripplingly dull pace.

In summary, have seen worse disaster films but over-ambition, severely underdeveloped and muddled writing and storytelling, an over-seriousness and lack of fun really let it down. 3/10