Ferocious Planet

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.

Okay so you're probably a fan of Stargate Atlantis and you saw that Joe Flanigan was in this movie. And then you noticed that Joe was playing a colonel and that you might see some of that old John Sheppard magic.

Well don't bother! Because this movie sucks! If this movie was on the other side of the Earth Stargate then Jack O'neill would send a nuke to make sure it never got through! And you would thank him for doing so.

This movie has no redeeming qualities. it is a bad movie with bad acting and bad cgi. The main plot could have been developed given decent writers and some competent actors. But I guess that would have made too much common sense. I do not understand how these films get released?

This is a very bad movie so do not waste your time. I have given it three stars one for Joe and one each for the sound and camer guys who did their jobs. Remember curiosity killed the cat!

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.

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.

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.