The Apocalypse

I don't know what just happened to me. Sandra Bernhard was fighting David Crosby while the little hooker friend from Pretty Woman was performing "Scenes From Shakespeare." You read that right. It's a good thing that the MPAA does not enact capital punishment, because everyone involved would have been strung up as examples to aspiring actors, writers and directors with more enthusiasm than talent. Painful. Pro tip: adding (AND ENDLESSLY REPEATING THE SAME) lines from Shakespeare does not make your movie good; it actually highlights how crummy the movie is. The writing was puerile, the acting was a visual Columbine, and the plot couldn't make it. Not all of the cats in the world could have made this movie enjoyable or even watchable. If faced with the dilemma of watching this movie or...doing anything else, I can strongly and authoritatively recommend anything else.

If you manage to get through the entire film and give it more thought than it warrants, you may find seeds of what could have been a good film scattered throughout.

Sandra Bernhard did a fair job with her leading role, only to be let down by the rest of the cast, the writing, directing, and effects (I suppose the sets were passable). Laura San Giacomo gives possibly the worst performance, completely over the top spouting incoherent snatches of Shakespeare. It appears that her part was filmed later and edited in, as she never interacts with the other actors and the "hacker" uses male pronouns when referring to her and her image.

This seemed as if several amateurs each directed a couple randomly-selected scenes without regard to each other's work, as characters are played very differently in adjoining scenes with no sense of development. The film ends suddenly and poorly, as if someone with an eye to the budget yelled "Cut, print!" the instant that the money ran out.

Perhaps this film itself was a salvage operation, where the shoot terminated prematurely and the studio edited whatever had already been filmed into something they could release upon an unsuspecting public.

If these movies - there seems to be about one per year - could possibly hew any closer to copying "Alien", they would. It is merely the aim of these films to make Alien all over again. The music. The characters and their conflicts. Even fragments of dialogue! "I don't trust so and so ...", "All I want is what's comin' to me..." These things either take place in space or underwater. Virus(1999), set on an ocean ship, was an interesting variation. The prime point of entertainment for me is the fatuousness of the imitation.

This picture is nowhere near as rancid as "Space Mutiny", which will cause psychological damage without the superb MST3K treatment, but "The Apocalypse" can have effects with apocalyptic results on the human psyche. I was actually able to tolerate the entire movie. It's something I would not want to watch again unless I wanted to give myself an excuse to commit suicide. I even actually own the movie on LaserDisc! But, it's a great deal, considering that it was given to me, or would that be a curse? The acting is just terrible, with parts either overdone, or simply bland. The props is what you'd expect from a low budget production, with stuff that looks like it was assembled with packing materials and done in a warehouse, looking worse than a high school production of "The Technicolor Dreamcoat". The video monitor displays were obviously VHS videotape, since one of the special effect for those displays was just simply visual searching back and forth throughout the scenes, with parts of the video sequences showing dropouts, probably because the tape was being worn out through excessive use during production. The music will make you want to plug your ears in pain as it makes the Macarena sound like a masterpiece. The visual effects? What visual effects? I've seen better visuals on a "Three Stooges" skit. It amazes me how the company that was responsible for the production actually had enough money left over to distribute this garbage, even on LaserDisc of all things. A DVD version is also a waste of material. The videotape version would be best, since you probably will be able to celebrate when the VCR decides to eat it. This is a production where the source material deserves to be locked in a vault and left to rot, fade, and be eaten by fungus and mold. - Reinhart

'The apocalypse' is the sort of film that immediately, within mere minutes, leads us to question how it is we came across the feature in the first place. A prologue, inserted in the middle of the opening credits (?), is strenuously forced, fast-paced, and disordered, and unclear for the fact of it. We also get a first glimpse of editing that is dubious, and special effects that are several years outdated even in 1997. Thereafter, early exposition is ham-handed and a little less than fully convincing. But, you know what, especially for as preposterous as the premise is, I was willing to overlook this messiness to see where 'The apocalypse' was going to end up. If nothing else, watching Laura San Giacomo recite Shakespeare with the same delirious vigor as an opera's mad scene, in the first fraction of the feature, would surely be worth the remainder of these 90-odd minutes. Right?

I don't mean to disparage director Hubert de la Bouillerie outright - he has a fair number of credits in other capacities - but his guiding hand as maestro of the movie leaves much to be desired. I assume it's with his instruction that the cast generally give performances that often seem disinterested, like the scenes we get in the final cut were just first takes, or practice runs. Meanwhile, once the story more meaningfully begins around the 30-minute mark, plot development is alternately frenetic, somewhat haphazard, and disjointed - or weak, and halfhearted. Likewise, J. Reifel's screenplay is just kind of all over the place. Dialogue is filled with technobabble and questionable small talk; characterizations are flat, hollow, and far from complete, each little more than set pieces.

Individual scenes, as written, seem like they could have constituted a compelling feature if more care were taken to fit them into the narrative. And at that, more than anything else, the story is a godawful mess tendered with glaring indifference and inattention to flow, coherence, or cohesiveness. Why did Goad set the ship on its course? How was that course progression seemingly disrupted, setting up the vessel as a future salvage opportunity for the plot? How did J. T.'s assembled crew learn about that ship? What is Vendler's deal, exactly? Why was it that he was considered for the mission in the first place? Connective threads between scenes, between story beats, and between characters and background aren't necessarily absent, but they're nigh invisible.

I suppose the set design and decoration is fine, and consideration for lighting. Camerawork is unremarkable, but suitable. And... well, I think that's it. That's the praise I have to offer for the bulk of the picture.

There are a small handful of good ideas in here, but none of them are realized with convincing passion, authenticity, any sense of diligence at all. None of them make up for the extraordinary, overwhelmingly tawdry pablum that 'The apocalypse' represents. This is such accursed slop that it utterly fails to keep us engaged, and I think to give it our full concentration would be considered an act of self-harm.

It turns out that those first few minutes, in which Laura San Giacomo delivers a monologue from 'Hamlet,' really were the highlight of the film. And, no, it wasn't worth watching the remainder of the runtime. After the opening credits finish, you can move on to something else, because you've seen everything of value in 'The apocalypse.'