Ice Quake

Awful, just bloody awful. It is difficult to decide what negative aspect of the movie to discuss as there were so may. In fact, I would speak of a positive aspect if I could find one.

I am a Canadian and cringe whenever I see that I am about to watch a Canadian movie as I have rarely seen one that did not leave me constantly saying "Oh, come on, really?"

What bothers me the most is that movies such as these are funded, in part, by tax revenue in the form of government film grants. We have people living on the street, children going to bed hungry at night, and the government feels it is more beneficial to put money into dismal productions like this.

I am not one who turns off a movie once I start watching one. Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment as this movie (using the word loosely) left me feeling like I threw away the portion of my life that was devoted to watching this. It is as if it was a class project done by students from a high school film class.

I honestly do not understand how it is that people can produce a work like this and feel that it is good. Spend the money needed to create something of this calibre and release it on the unsuspecting public.

I seldom write reviews, but I am so tired of seeing my tax dollars going to make such horrible movies that I had to vent. If given the opportunity to watch this movie or scrub toilets in a subway station, go for the toilets. It will surely be far more rewarding and enjoyable.

ICE QUAKE is an extraordinarily poor SyFy Channel disaster movie that sees a river of liquid methane causing the very landscape to split and shift in Alaska. Inevitably, a scientist and his family happen to be caught up in the natural disaster and must fight to survive nature's onslaught.

So far so ordinary for the SyFy Channel, but this one is exceptionally poor compared to most of their movies in this sub-genre. There's not one distinguished cast member here, just a bunch of no-name actors giving boring performances. The characters are underwritten to the point of non-existence and there's way too much crying and screaming going on.

The entire narrative consists of repetitive scenes of people trying to flee when the ground splits and cracks open to emit clouds of boiling methane. The CGI effects are horrendous beyond belief and there's something mind-numbingly repetitive in the way the same incidents befall the same characters over and over again. Even fans of these low rent disaster flicks should avoid it...

For a SyFy movie, then "Ice Quake" took me by surprise and gave me a good, cold shake. This movie, unlike so many other SyFy movies, had a solid story, that you easily emerged yourself into, and it had good characters.

The movie boasts a couple of good actors as well, which help to bring the overall enjoyment up. These are Brendan Fehr (playing Michael Webster) and Victor Garber (playing colonel Bill Hughes). These two were the ones carrying the movie. But there were other good performances as well, the two children did good jobs as well; Jodelle Ferland (playing Tia Webster) and Ryan Grantham (playing Shane Webster).

As for the story, then it was a captivating and interesting story, as SyFy movie stories go, anyway. Subterranean methane in gas and liquid form are wrecking havoc on the snow-clad, frozen north. As as always in these type of disaster movies, it is up to a very small group of people to save the day. We have all seen these story lines before, so there is nothing new to be seen here. But still, it works well enough for the movie.

The effects in the movie were actually quite good for a SyFy movie. I liked them and they, for most parts, seemed real enough. And having good effects does help to elevate the enjoyment of a movie.

If you like natural disaster movies, then you should give "Ice Quake" a chance, despite it being a SyFy movies. SyFy does put out a lot of well-below average movies, but once in awhile they do come out with something good. And "Ice Quake" is one of those good movies.

The idea of a ice quake is a weird idea, but could have work for this stupid idea. But the movie itself is rather bland and uninteresting throughout. Most of the movie is spend of the family just wandering around the mountains and getting separate. That part isn't that interesting to watch and barely anything happen during it. There is a minor side about about a crazy scientist guy which ended pretty quickly. Even the military plotline is rather generic and isn't interesting at all. As for the disaster scenes, there not that much earthquake disaster that you see throughout the movie because it spend a lot of times on the mountains with just cracks on it. The movie does has some nice explosion in it. And the acting itself is mostly bland.

Ice Quake could have been better, but is a bland movie that wasn't that enjoyable.

a new sci-fi channel (don't you hate calling it sy-fy? i sure do.) Christmas adventure set on a potentially volcanic Alaskan mountain that spawns earthquakes, endless, bottomless fissures and avalanches, as well as spewing uber-cold gas that freezes things instantly. will the brave scientist and his family (who just happen to be out getting their Christmas tree at the time) get out in time and find a way to stop the chaos before the town is destroyed? we sure hope so. this would make part of great night of icy movies with "frozen" and then "ice spiders", which was the CGI sci-fi channel movie from last year around this time. i actually kind of liked this one; they don't really get around to telling you what the problem is right away, and there aren't nearly enough scary movies full of death and destruction set during the holidays.