21-12-2012 La profezia dei Maya

I don't know if SciFi had any involvemnt, but it's akin those end-of-world flicks. I happen to really like Jewel Staite, so I may have overrated it. It's a cookie cutter plot with the scientist and civilian that are vested with saving the world. They face uncertainly, lack of direction, and in surmountable odds in saving the Earth. Plus there are misguided ,malicious and powerful elements in the US Govt bent on stopping them. David and Goliath repeat. Production quality is par for the course for a TV movie, but finesse elements like score, special effects are on a meager budget. But they pull it off to make it watchable, at least for me. And of course, I get to watch Jewel.

Here again, I was looking forward tonight to watching a new disaster movie and with hopefully awesome special effects as in the movie 2012. Instead of spending money creating awesome special effects, the film makers chose instead to report various cities and countries' destruction via TV and radio special news reports. When NYC was destroyed, the few seconds of destruction were shown in a window's reflection! What a joke! The film makers instead used up the movie's time with idiotic and nothing but annoying car chases and shoot-outs, which were totally unnessary to the story. You can view better special effects by watching The Weather Channel's "It Could Happen Tomorrow"! If I had known, I wouldn't have wasted my time and I advise you not to waste your time with this stinker either!

When I sat down here in 2024 to watch the 2011 movie "Doomsday Prophecy", I must admit that I wasn't really harboring much of any grand expectations to the movie. With it being a disaster movie of sorts that I had never heard about, I just didn't really believe that I would be in for a grand piece of cinematic history. Nor was the 3.9 rating on IMDb hinting towards a grand piece of cinematic history.

However, with "Doomsday Prophecy" being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to sit down and give writers Jason Bourque and Shawn Linden's 2011 movie the benefit of the doubt.

And within the first 5 minutes of the movie, it becomes abundantly clear just what type of natural disaster movie that this would be. A super generic one. There was a large fissure opening up in the ground, expanding exponentially, and oddly enough following straight after the vehicle wherein one of the main characters was sitting. Those types of movies are just ludicrous, especially when they could just have veered to the right and have been out of harms way instantly.

Writers Jason Bourque and Shawn Linden put together a somewhat generic script and storyline. Sure, it was watchable and sort of entertaining enough for what it turned out to be. But I have to say that the supernatural elements with the future predicting rod was just a tad out of place and added a laughable element to the movie that just took away from the already slight sense of realism that the movie had going for it. And I am pretty sure that if massive chunks of USA got destroyed, a big part of China as well, and all of Italy and most of Greece was sunk into the ocean, then there would be a worldwide state of panic, and people wouldn't be out on the streets frolicking and going about with their daily cheery lives, as they did in this movie. It just made zero sense.

Needless to say that the outcome of events and ending of the movie was just fully and wholly laughable and unrealistic.

There were a couple of familiar faces on the cast list, and that was Hiro Kanagawa, Jewel Staite, Matthew Walker and Jerry Wasserman. So yeah, "Doomsday Prophecy" wasn't exactly a star-filled feature. However, I will say that the acting performances throughout the course of the movie were actually fair.

Visually then "Doomsday Prophecy" was okay. I mean, it wasn't the best of CGI effects, nor were it among some of the worst I've seen in disaster movies. Sure, it was pretty terrible CGI here, but there are disaster movies with far worse CGI. So at least that counted for something.

Semi-watchable a single time, but you're not in for anything memorable or particularly outstanding here. And the ending to the movie was just a slap to the face of anyone who had spent 92 minutes sitting through the movie.

My rating of "Doomsday Prophecy", from director Jason Bourque, lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

This movie was not suspenseful or particularly interesting. The CGI was typically unnatural and very fake looking, there were a lot of failures to keep consistent with some of the supposedly scientific phenomenon, and it was a rather see-through plot with no surprises. The only saving grace about this movie was the actors were actually good. I think a lot more could have been done with this movie if it had had a better budget. It was almost like watching one of those semi-interesting science movies they show you in high school. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of those high school science movies had better graphics. Worth watching once if you are bored and have alcohol. Not something you'd turn off half way through out of sheer boredom, but not something I would watch again and/or recommend to others.

In northern Bulgaria, researchers are puzzled by a strange series of "earthquake clusters." They are more dead than puzzled when an earthquake strikes their own little group. Over in New York City, publishing house proofreader A.J. Buckley (as Eric Fox) discusses a doomsday prophecy just before an earthquake strikes. Up in Mount Rainier, Washington, blonde archaeologist Jewel Staite (as Brooke Calvin) pooh-poohs prophecy. She is in for a rude awakening. It appears as if Armageddon is underway. Because they are the co-stars, Mr. Buckley and Ms. Staite are meant to team-up and save the planet. If they don't, the planet may not be saved...

The otherworldly villain is a "Dark Star" with powers like a black hole. In reality, the world would end quickly and without fake earthquakes. Buckley and Staite are assisted by a magic rod given to Buckley. The magic rod enables him to see into the future – in a story about the end of the world, seeing the future is always encouraging. They meet wise old Native American Indian Gordon Tootoosis (as John). Interesting how Indians began their movie career as savages out to rape white women and now appear as helpful elders with near supernatural wisdom. The mission is to find some magical statues. "Doomsday Prophesy" is sheer nonsense.

** Doomsday Prophecy (8/13/11) Jason Bourque ~ A.J. Buckley, Jewel Staite, Bruce Ramsay, Alan Dale