Distruzione totale

This isn't a perfect film, it's not high-budget, it's an end-of-the-world disaster flick. Anyone going in expecting anything more is severely delusional. There are some flaws, a few corny lines, and the ending is slightly lame (but not totally). There have been FAR worse disaster films. It is definitely not a 1-star film as some would have people believe.

The directing and acting in this was above par. The story line was very cliche, very predictable, nothing unusual. It does however have some decent special effects. I particularly liked the acting of Aleks Paunovic, the Russian electric lineman. In truth most of the actors do a fairly decent job. The film starts out interesting and maintains its momentum through both episodes. I suspect it is better to binge-watch it online rather than lose that momentum in a 2-night micro-series.

Several reviews here are extraordinarily harsh. One has to wonder what they were expecting going in. You don't go see a Transformers movie and complain that it's about giant robots, nor go to a hamburger joint and complain they don't have gourmet food. This is obviously a low-budget, made-for-TV disaster flick, and people are knocking it for being a low budget disaster flick? Get real.

This is considerably better than most films of this type. I found it interesting all the way through. No, it's not hard science (does anyone here even KNOW hard science when it comes to dark matter?). There's a lot of supposition, conjecture and imagination going on. It's not intended to be cerebral fiction.

Overall an entertaining film, which is all one should expect it to be. Not the best film ever made, but by no means one of the worst as some "reviewers" here would have us believe. If you have three hours to kill, it's worth a view. People giving this movie an unbalanced 1-star review are doing no one any favors. If you don't like B class movies, don't watch B class movies. Duh.

I love Christina Cox, her performances are always amazing and she's clearly the star of this show. However, the plot is nonsensical and irrational. The scenes are nice and special effects are not bad.

But the biggest problem with this series is the PLOT and MESSAGE being sent to people that is completely the wrong message to send to people. Your typical UNORIGINAL Frankenstein message "Stop playing God, scientists!" This is by far the dumbest, anti-intellectual message movies/films have spread throughout the decades.

Without spoiling anything... Scientists discover a source of energy but certain things happen that cause disasters and it simply logically doesn't follow why they would happen in other random areas. It also doesn't make sense that they can't just pull the plug. It further doesn't make sense why an evil CEO would risk jail time and possible catastrophic results just to not have a "bad quarterly review." A lot of plot holes are included in the movie, such as the Russian-sub-plot as to how something could be kept under wraps.

Essentially the conclusion the filmmakers want you to draw is: Science is crazy, magical, and accidents "might" happen. Which is simply the antithesis of what science is about and accidents such as this never happen on this scale in scientific experiments by scientists. There's a reason they do pre-tests to pre-tests to tests, and in this film, they act like even those pre-tests can go wrong.

The worst "energy-related disaster" in our REAL world, such as chernobyl, was because of engineers who didn't know what they were doing. It was because of lack of safety protocols, lack of computer automated systems, and outdated equipment that was UNDERFUNDED. That is the lesson to learn from Chernobyl, when you don't invest in a technology for increasing its safety standards.

So if anyone thinks that they should draw the lesson of: "We shouldn't fund such experiments, we don't fully understand!" -- That is the incorrect lesson. The mere act of not-funding-something, is the lesson to be drawn from real life events like Chernobyl, because machines and systems get too old; protocols become outdated; and these technologies never improve and become safer.

As for the "Don't play God" nonsense, why would God give humans the ability to do these things if he didn't want you to discover them? Or why would he allow millions of people to die, in such a "failed experiment" just to teach a simple lesson about that? It makes no sense logically or philosophically, and filmmakers should stop trying to create conclusions for their audience that they probably never even asked a philosopher about.

Look, there are lots of technical reasons to cringe at this. Especially if you are a trained film, script, or score editor.

There are points where the storyline borrows almost completely from other SyFy series. There are may points that are completely derivative of movies from the last 20 years. Some of the film- workers are obviously not Russian or "terrorist" types.

Music sometimes sounds stock, and at times overwhelms the dialog to the point of being ridiculous.

Yes, it is really bad most of the time. But you don't have to pay to watch this other than your time and it has some entertainment value.

Just watch the show if you like SyFy productions and decide for yourself. It is at least worlds beyond Sharknado.

After sitting though this hoping it was going to improve or grab me in some way it is easy to see why the rating for this is so low.

Very average disaster fare IMO.

Nothing special to make you want to sit through 180 minutes of average special effects and average acting. I did it to be able to write this review.

The "been there done that" memories were raging all the way through this, lots of standard good guy bad guy cliques.

Bad guy greedy company owner tries to go against all the recommendations that they shouldn't to do what they want to do, small environmental protest group interferes and disaster ensures.

Bad guys escape justice at last minute, good guys overt complete catastrophe and life gets back on track. Only 500,000 people we never see have died.

The End.

Eve of Destruction does have its redeeming values, and it is definitely better than Ring of Fire that had nothing to recommend it apart from Terry O'Quinn. The setting in Eve of Destruction has a good austere atmosphere, and while not mind-blowing the photography is hardly what you call amateurish. The acting from the four leads is also better than average, Steven Weber is good as the father figure, Christine Cox does sympathetic believably, Treat Williams makes for a great slime-ball and Aleks Paunovic has a moody and sullen sort of character and he pulls it off nicely. The special effects do stick out like a sore thumb though, while the rest of the production values saw some decent effort put into it the special effects look like a rushed last-minute job. The music is not very memorable, has a tendency to plod and it is unimaginative. It wouldn't have mattered if the characters were clichés, what matters more is making them interesting and despite the commendable lead acting the characters are not developed enough. The secondary roles weren't as involving as the lead roles, they generally lacked personality and were bland as a result. The script is repetitive and resorts too much in random and overwrought melodrama, while the story has a decent concept that is executed with a lack of thrills and tension generally that gets increasingly dull, illogical and cheesy in the second half(Eve of Destruction is a little better paced than Ring of Fire this said, and is not as exposition-heavy). Overall, was lacking and is not that great but could have been much worse. 4/10 Bethany Cox