Ferocious Planet

"Ferocious Planet" wasn't all entirely bad, it had its moments, though few and far apart.

The story here is about some scientists having found a way to look into other dimensions, but then something goes wrong and a group of people are transported into another dimension, where they are fighting an unknown species of life. Sounds fairly alright, doesn't it? Yes. And the idea is actually good enough, but the movie suffered from a lack of ambition and the element to fully draw you in. And some of the decisions made by the characters in the movie makes you go "what? why would someone do that?" - it just doesn't always make sense.

As for the acting in "Ferocious Planet", well it wasn't too bad either. But frankly speaking, it was mostly mediocre performances. It was like they hadn't enough emotion and sparkling energy with them, and it resulted in that you felt distanced and didn't care about the characters in the movie. And you just got to love the role that John Rhys-Davies had in the movie, and the actual amount of time he was in the movie. But a good way to lure in people, by having a familiar name on the cast list.

For being a SyFy movie, then "Ferocious Planet" could have been worse than it turned out to actually be. The movie is adequate, and provides half-hearted entertainment throughout the entire length of the feature.

One this that really worked well for the movie, was the design of the creature in the other dimension. It looked really cool. It did look fake at times when it was moving, but most of the time it looked believable enough and good enough. So this worked well for the movie.

Having seen "Ferocious Planet" now, then I can say that SyFy have other movies available that are better than this one, and they also have a lot of movies available that are far worse.

It's always funny if you see big names on a sleeve of an unknown movie. Here the name that I want to mention is John Rhys-Davies. He was in the Lord of The Rings trilogy and the Indiana Jones fame. But he's maybe for 10 minutes in this SyFy production. And you know what SyFy mean, mostly really bad flicks but I guess that they have learned their lesson. This rather looks good. I even enjoyed it. Of course it's low on the red stuff, some killings do occur but not really to mention. But the movie started off really well with an experiment going awry and transports a group of observers into a nightmarish dimension. From their on they are on the other side. Some dinosaur looking creatures are making the way of survival a hard target. There is of course a lot of CGI, especially the creature but that's normal for SyFy. Nevertheless, it almost the same, creature, running, creature appears, running away. But it's one that you could see with your kids on a rainy afternoon. Somehow you keep watching what is going to happens next.

I give it an 8 mainly for the good slips of humor that they give the audience here and there. Which is good, because if they tried to be totally serious, it would have felt corny.

My favorite: "Rule: Don't poke the alien." It was an interesting mix of characters thrown together by an experimental demonstration gone wrong (of course!) And a bunch of Washington Senatorial aides, scientists and a few marine guards are thrown into another dimension. Now how do they get back? What's nice about this flick is that the script doesn't really follow the tried and true tropes we come to expect from 'Scientist Experiments Gone Wrong' but sends the viewer towards different outcomes. . .with a bit of humor interspersed with the gore.

And the ending was. . .interestingly open to interpretation.

This is a good Saturday Night 'B' Flick. Not bad for SyFy.

Gosh! Why all the bad reviews? It's a made-for-TV movie that could easily be turned into a series. I know John Rhys-Davies makes a cameo appearance and is killed off 5 minutes into this movie about sliding into a parallel dimension and the cast's frantic attempts to return, but there's no reason he couldn't be brought back for a TV series with that same concept. Heck, we could call the show "Sliders." OK, sarcasm mode off.

The acting was fine. The CGI, while limited (budget I suppose) was OK. However, the script was pathetic. I couldn't even find a credit for who wrote this. Was it unscripted or was the writer too ashamed? We get to hear one of the characters ask "are you tapping that?" The only possible purpose of the line at that point in the story was to demonstrate that the writer knows 21st century locker-room lingo. Hm... maybe that's it: it was written by a high-schooler.

Aside from the cheap lines, why do hack writers have to create military personnel incapable of following orders, otherwise intelligent adults suddenly incapable of cooperating and yet other adults in a life threatening emergency suddenly deciding that THEN is the time to hatch a transparent money-making scheme or wander off alone to examine the flora and fauna? The "don't poke the alien" line is funny, but several people manhandle the alien. While there's a certain satisfaction that one of the idiot characters gets what he deserves as a result of alien poking, it made absolutely zero sense.

With some good writing this have been a watchable -- even though rehashed -- film. I know I could have personally made something better of the writing. As it was, for the lack of any appreciable budget for decent writers, this film is a total waste of time.

This is a film made for the cable television channel SyFy which is probably as much information as you need to judge how good this film is.

Synopsis: A group of people are gathered in an underground laboratory in a Federal building, including scientists, military and politicians to see a presentation of an experiment into viewing other dimensions. There is an accident and instead of just viewing another dimension the whole lab is ripped out of our dimension and dumped into a parallel dimension populated only by plants and giant carnivorous CGI monsters. The survivors must find a way to repair the machine that brought them here and escape the ferocious creatures.

As always seems to be the case with SyFy channel films, the problem lies in the writing. An accident in experiment is one of the laziest and most ham-fisted plot devices in cheap science fiction.The CGI monsters are good enough for the price but there's no attempt to set them in a believable ecosystem. What do the creatures eat when there are no humans? The writer uses idiocy as a plot device in different ways to kill off characters either through arrogance, fear or greed.

Overall this was a mediocre and lazy film. I can't fault any of the actors too much since they were competent enough with what they had to work with. Joe Flanigan plays his standard wise-cracking soldier hero part. John Rhys-Davies is the cynical arrogant Senator. Dagmar Döring plays the scientist in charge of the project.