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.

...with neither a whimper nor a bang but another absurdly bad movie. Actually it starts reasonably well and has some effective special effects. But it spirals downward pretty quickly, yet another repeat of the now standard Armageddon formula that has been done endless times...world faces threat (alien invasion... epidemic...giant meteor...alien invaders...killer bees...take your choice. In this case it's earthquakes.) Young guy, helped by sexy girl friend, fights his bosses to save the world...and they all live happily ever after, at least until the next sci-fi turkey. This is a Canadian movie but the good guys are all Americans. Rather than some genuine high-tech suspense, we get clichéd car chases and gun fights like some two bit white hat vs. black hat pot-boiler. (Hey guys... this is the end of the world we're talking about here. Use some imagination!!!) The Canadian producers either didn't know or decided to ignore the fact that American lawmen and military personnel cannot operate in Canada with impunity as they do here. Not quite bad enough to be good. But still pretty awful.

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.

Surprisingly interesting. Subject is very actual and overused in many movies but this one brings a different twist to the "end-of-the-world" franchise.

This is not like the Hollywood product-placement films, it actually has content, action, some real pieces of spirituality inserted here and there discreetly, otherwise the fanatics would raise their bible! A great movie. To the opposite of some reviewers, I'm not into the already chewed up flicks from Hollywood and such so my review is not based on how much sex, drugs, loud music, barely hidden publicity, and how many corporates names are inserted in the movie, it's about the IMAGINATION (unknown to the Hollywood crowd!) Don't be biased by the Hollywood lover, this is a very good movie and deserves more than it has.

Yep, it's another shot-in-Canada disaster flick, produced by the SyFy Channel and replete with absolutely terrible CGI effects and little else besides. Even by the standards of the sub-genre this is a lousy flick with very few redeeming qualities to recommend it.

The story sees an archaeologist and a scientist team up when the world starts being destroyed by earthquakes after the 2012 Mayan prophecy. Luckily, they have a videotape borrowed from a psychic guy who predicted all of the events before his death. They go on the run with a mysterious artifact that may somehow save mankind, all the while pursued by aggressive soldiers who want to see them dead.

And that's all the plot you're going to get with this one, because DOOMSDAY PROPHECY is a low budget film indeed. There are a few CGI effects scattered through the production, typically involving earthquakes tearing the ground apart, but for the most part this is an interminable chase flick with a couple of dull characters being stalked through the woods by boring villains. Alan Dale, aka NEIGHBOURS's Jim Robinson, is the only guy I recognised in this mess and his role is a very limited one. Next please.