Day of Reckoning

I've given up on the SyFy Channel. This is typical of all their productions. Terrifying and spectacular scenes involving CGI monsters/aliens/whatever separated by deserts of arid narrative with little or no purpose other than taking the characters to the next scene involving CGI. It's just crap. Some visual engagement but zero intellectual value otherwise. The suits at SyFy either are idiots or venal purveyors of weird trash -- or both. Don't waste your time. There's so little artistic value, other than the yeoman efforts of the put-upon casts, that I honestly believe SyFy is soliciting scripts from middle-schoolers. With a title like "Day of Reckoning" and the very rare religious references made in dialog, one might suspect that some attempt at rationalizing the cause of a disaster threatening the existence of the human race might be made. One would be mistaken in that assumption. There's nothing here. Watching while drunk might improve the experience.

When the world was invaded by underground creatures that wanted to wipe out mankind from Earth, the post-apocalyptic survivors called The Day of Reckoning. Fifteen years later, people have the same signs indicating that a new attack is coming and they seek out shelter for protection. What will happen to mankind this time?

"Day of Reckoning" is another SyfY Channel garbage with a lame and senseless story and awful computer-generated imagery. The plot begins with no explanation or character development. Then the viewer sees a teenager (Tyler) jeopardizing his family and friends with a stupid unexplained attitude. There is a fight to survive from his family and friends and nobody misses the death of his mother's girlfriend. Then his uncle and aunt die and nobody grieves. In the end they laugh as if they were on the beach of in a picnic, forgetting those who died. But the worst is that the appalling creatures that destroy the world are easily killed by salt and saltwater. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

15 years after a massive demon attack, they come back to finish the job.

If you're a big fan of Signs and The Happening, have I got a movie for you! It's got all the elements that you loved about them, including bad writing, annoying characters, and monsters that have an inexplicably bizarre weakness.

Demonic monsters almost conquer the world overnight. The militaries of the world are shown to be completely overrun by the demons, even though salt destroys them. A dysfunctional family kills almost every demon they encounter, yet nobody else in the world can? Right, that makes perfect sense.

I doubt anyone cared whether they even made a good movie. It's kind of hard to blame them, though, given that this is a SyFy Original. I had to really lower my expectations to rock bottom once I saw that logo. I'm actually a bit annoyed that subscription streaming services would offer this up like it's a real movie. It's not even edited to remove the commercial breaks! It just fades to black in the middle of a scene.

Although the acting was occasionally poor, I think the real problem was the writing. Barbara Crampton, who always makes bad movies slightly better, appears in a smaller role. It was nice to see her again. Sometimes the other characters rose above the writing to become kind of tolerable, but it was a bit rare.

The special effects were bad. I've seen worse, but the problem is that those movies were so bad they were good. This one wasn't. The designs themselves were alright, but it looked like they hired the producer's brother-in-law to do all the technical work. It was unconvincing enough that they should have just stuck to practical effects no matter how cheesy, or, failing that, had a few monsters in the shadows, not a bunch demons in the daylight.

I made it to the end of the movie, so you probably can, too. I don't recommend you do that, though. If you're bored and looking for something to pass 80 minutes before bedtime, I guess it's okay.

So you have monsters coming out of a hole in the earth every fifteen years. Salt kills them. And no one thought to dump salt water in the hole? Just wondering.

I am a sucker for the horror genre, and I am the first to admit that I was lured in by the promise of the movie cover/poster. Especially because it did seem rather interesting, sort of a mixture between something demonic and zombiesque.

First of all, it was an uphill struggle to actually sit through the entire movie, because it was a massively generic storyline, which offered very little in terms of entertainment value, and even less so in originality. Furthermore, the storyline was horribly predictable, to the point of where you just shake your head well ahead of things actually happening.

But for a horror movie, then "Day of Reckoning" was scarily devoid of anything even remotely scary. And it would have served the movie well if they had opted to go for a proper storyline that could have bolstered the fact that this was intended to be a horror movie.

Furthermore, as a horror movie it is essential to have proper practical effects and/or CGI. Alas, it can be said in all honesty that this is something that "Day of Reckoning" didn't have. And it was showing blatantly on the screen, because the CGI was laughable at best, and it was super poorly animated to the point of being an eyesore.

I can't recall any of the acting performances in the movie, so it is safe to say the cast weren't particularly memorable. I am sure that they did the best they could given the severe restrictions they had anchoring them down.

Surpringly enough I managed to suffer through the entire ordeal that is "Day of Reckoning", but it was a very hard struggle. And I can honestly say that this is not a movie that you will return to watch a second time, providing you get through it the first time.