Nature Unleashed: Earthquake

I was surprised to note that the film was released in 2004; it has a very "1960's" European feel in look and soundtrack. None of the supposedly US characters looks or sounds American; the hairstyles and clothes, again, are very retro and much of the dialog appears to have been looped--without the appropriate background noise! None of this would matter if the conflicts or characters were involving--but the action is very formulaic and the acting poor.It certainly is difficult to come up with new approaches to disaster-type scenarios on limited budgets, but "China Syndrome" and countless earthquake films have already been done. As the Bible--and Spielberg in his Oscar acceptance speech--said: "In the beginning was the word..." With or without a significant budget, there first needs to be decent script, and this one just doesn't work. If the creators of Mystery Theater 3000 were still doing their magic, this film would be a perfect candidate for parody.

I read everyone else's reviews & comments and I disagree with them all. First, this is not a ho-hum, boring movie. An earthquake cripples a Russian power plant threatening a meltdown, and it's a race against time to avert the disaster. Add into the mix a Russian supervisor who refuses to accept the idea of anything wrong, and will stop at nothing to keep the truth from getting out, even if it means locking the engineer near the core, and trying to run away when confronted with the truth. That is very believable. This movie is well-paced, and doesn't take long to get started. And once it gets going, you're on a roller-coaster ride of suspense. The scene in the elevator shaft reminds me of the suspense in TOWERING INFERNO and POSEIDON ADVENTURE. The kids are very believable American youngsters trying to deal with their parents' separation, and fate forces them to work together. Maybe it's all cliché, maybe not. But I like this movie. Maybe the special effects were taken from DANTE'S PEAK, I don't know. Frankly, I don't care, since they're very brief and quick. Only when scenes are obviously stolen from other movies do I care, like when they stole footage from AIRPORT 1975 to create SONIC IMPACT. But try it yourself. You may be surprised.

When you set forth to write a movie review, you should have some theme for your comments, and I believe the creators of this website would prefer you give a prospective viewer some idea about the work, whether or not it is competently crafted, entertaining, or pure crap. Too often, I find that reviewers feed on each other like bottom-feeding snails.....if one or two of the early reviewers hate the film, then most subsequent reviews echo their thoughts. This film was thoroughly trashed by the reviews I have read. But it is truly not that bad. It follows a script, something some of the blockbusters seem to disregard these days. It is entertaining with lots of the elements which seem to attract viewers. It has interesting characters, conflict between the characters, a plot, all elements which tend to please people who want to be shown a story which is not totally predictable. The guys and girls who created this movie ought to be given a break. They did the best they could working with a limited budget. I enjoyed the time I spent with this film. I think you will enjoy it also.

Josh (Fintan McKeown) lives in a Russian city where a nuclear plant is present. In fact, he is an engineer at the facility while his ex-wife is a scientist there as well. Josh made plenty of mistakes as a husband and dad and, therefore, lives separately from his ex and two teenage kids. The two children have issues as well, for the son longs for a motorcycle, which his mother forbids, and the daughter is rebellious, too. One day, all Hades breaks loose, as an earthquake hits the region. The teenage girl, who skipped school, ends up on damaged bus, unable to leave a wounded teacher from her school. Most importantly, the nuclear plant is severely hurt, losing its precious cooling water supply. A meltdown may occur but Josh and the other plant operators are temporarily stymied about how to prevent the worst case scenario. In addition, the couple is worried about their missing children! Will a solution be found in time and the family reunited? This isn't the worst disaster flick of all time but its not great, either. None of the actors are well known and the script is cliché ridden, even down to an evil, conniving plant employee. But, for all that, it is still watchable, intriguing enough to entice its audience to stay with it until the resolution is known. So, if you are a fan of disaster and survival type movies, you might give it a go.

Well, sure, I was lured in to watching the 2005 natural disaster movie "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" here in 2021. And it was because of the movie's cover, it being a natural disaster movie, and also because it was movie that I hadn't already seen, that I sat down to watch this 2005 movie from writer Andy Hurst and director Tibor Takács.

And there shall be no doubt about this when I say that "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" was by no means a great movie. In fact, the movie's cover was actually the best part about the entire feature. Sad as that may be.

Yeah, the storyline was pretty generic, even for a natural disaster movie. So there wasn't much of any overly interesting entertainment factors to be had here. The whole movie was as predictable as it was generic.

It should be said, though, that some of the scenes with the disaster wrecked by the earthquake tremors weren't actually all that bad. But then on the other hand there were scenes of the same kind that was just downright laughable and painful to witness. Most of the scenes during the quakes just didn't have enough sense of chaos and destruction to it, which ultimately lead to some rather unconvincing scenes, which made the movie suffer terribly. Especially since a natural disaster movie needs to have impact, impressive CGI scenes and lots of edge-of-the-seat moments to capture the audience. That just wasn't present in the 2005 movie "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake".

And it didn't really help much that the characters in the movie were written as generic, wooden and rigid, most of which you don't even really care about one ounce.

All in all, then "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" was a rather forgettable movie and a very stale experience for a natural disaster movie. I would actually recommend that you don't waste your time, money or effort on this 2005 movie, because it really wasn't worth it.

My rating of "Nature Unleashed: Earthquake" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.