Customer Reviews

Meteor Apocalypse

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

*May contain spoiler: I watched Meteor Apocalyse and really enjoyed the story / plot. Joe Lando plays David, a man who seems to be upset with life in general, but takes it out with shortness on his wife and daughter. Meahwhile a meteor is broken up in space by nuclear missles making the debris head towards Earth, Lake Mead, NV to be exact, and poisons the water supply. David is called into work and finds his co-worker foaming at the mouth and David realizes the water has been contaminated. He tells his wife on the phone not to drink the water, only to hear on the other end, his wife asking the daughter if she drank the water, and then the phone goes dead. David rushes home trying to avoid meteors falling from the sky. He arrives as his neighborhood is being evacuated and is kept from his family who are being quarantined. David escapes from those detaining him and vows to find his family, whom he loves and wants to apologize to for his attitude. Traveling on foot he comes across a woman who seems to be sick after drinking a soft drink. He helps her and they travel in her Jeep to find his family. But once again meteors attack from the sky and the vehicle stops running. They travel on foot to find his family have been taken from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. The movie continues on this theme where David is determined to be with his wife and daughter all the while fighting off guys with guns and those pesky meteors. Claudia Christian plays Kate, David's wife. She isn't in the movie much, but she is good whenever she is. Cooper Harris is great as the sick woman David finds and who ultimately helps him look for his family. But Joe Lando is the real star of this movie. He is very believable as a man who will do anything, fight any obstacle, to be with his family. I bought this movie because Joe (Sully, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) is in it, but found the story to be just as much to watch it for.

It's called "Meteor Apocalypse," so what are you expecting? Ok, so this is a budget sci-fi/disaster movie with a fairly believable plot, and some good acting, and then again, some not so good. The two main characters give quite good performances, and there are a few others that are good, but most of the supporting cast require more acting training. After having watched '2012' and finding the special effects mesmerizing, but the overall story not credible - John Cusac dodging every kind of catastrophe possible on film, and surviving. This film is the opposite. The special effects are terrible, yet the story (which is similar to 2012) is somewhat believable in places.

The plot centers around a man, David (Played by Joe Lando), who discovers that the earth is under attack from thousands of meteors (caused by a failed attempt by world leaders to destroy a comet heading towards earth). David soon discovers that a meteor that landed in nearby Lake Mead (in Nevada), has contaminated the drinking water in the Las Vegas area (where he lives with his wife and daughter). People who drank the water begin to die. This discovery causes the federal government to begin quarantines of people who drank the water - David's daughter included. David is then separated from his family through a series of plot circumstances. Now David must make his way into Las Vegas to find a colleague, who is working on a medical cure for the water contamination. Most of the plot involves David dodging falling debris from the comet as he makes his way first to Las Vegas, finding a sick young woman on the way, who joins him, then the two of them attempting to make their way to LA (where he believes his wife and daughter have been taken). The meteors look great coming from the sky, but once they hit the ground, you can see how fake they are. There is no visual impact to the ground, just the image of spreading dust that doesn't look like it fits the landscape where the impact occurs. And the actual blasts from the impact look very fake.

There are two scenes where David gives the medical cure to contaminated victims, and they are miraculously cured. I found this just a bit incredible. They were near death, then one drink from some chemical in a test tube caused them to wake up instantaneously, jump to their feet all cheery and thankful for David, their savior. Perhaps this movie suffers from a bold attempt to cram too much plot into a two hour time frame. This is just one example of that dynamic.

The worst scenes (and there are several interspersed throughout the film) are from the Washington DC headquarters of the CDC (Center for Disease Containment), where they are attempting to evacuate their people from the LA area due to a comet that is due to plunge into the city in three days, and every scene there is disjointed from the rest of the story, and the acting is terrible. There are pauses between dialogue, which look very awkward and out of place as if the actors did not know what to do. I noticed several scenes in the film like this. I felt that they were good perhaps as a rehearsal take, but not for the final cut.

By far the best performance in the film was a black female pastor of a church in LA, who finds David and the woman whom he's helping to survive, and insists that they take shelter in her church before they are evacuated from LA the next day. If the writers had given this actor more scenes in the plot, it might have been a better movie despite the problems with the other acting and the special effects. But they kill this woman off by a meteor hitting the church, while David and his female friend escape and head to another location.

There were a few moments when I felt that the writers were oversimplifying the logistics of the story. For example, there is no explanation for how David is able to find a ravine northeast of Los Angeles merely from the information given to him by a young woman at the church. And the information is just that: the other quarantine point (where David hopes to find his wife and daughter) is northeast of LA near a ravine - just head about 3 miles north. No other information. Now I don't know about you, but I live in the LA area, and believe me; finding a specific ravine that is northeast of the city is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. There are perhaps thousands of ravines in the LA area, and most of them are in the mountains north and northeast of the city. More information would be required to find a specific one. But miracle of miracles, David finds his way there, and indeed finds his wife and daughter. LA is destroyed by a cheesy non-CGI induced blast that looks like it was projected onto an image of LA, (think of the special effects from the 1970s disaster movie 'Earthquake') with very little effort to make it look real, as David and his family look on in terror. Then the movie ends.

I enjoy watching disaster films, and most of them are not very good in the first place, so this one is not exactly terrible in that genre. It just needed a little extra care Overall I would not recommend this film. It was a waste of the $2.99 I paid to rent it. But at least I didn't purchase it.

I had to rush around on this Saturday to make it home in time to catch my early evening SyFy icky bug. I love disaster movies and though not strictly icky bug, they have some of the same thrills (or lack, thereof). In this one, it reminded me of a million other apocalypse movies with the usual breakdown in society. At the same time it reminded me a bit of Mad Max.

There are plenty of plot holes like when the hero and the impossibly gorgeous girl are picked up by two federal agents and are chased by a bunch of mindless ATV riders on the attack. They leave the surviving agent to shoot it out with these whackos while they run across the desert away from the scene. Yet, nobody chases after them. Hmmm.

Then there is the girl. Instead of finding some normal looking woman, he finds a gorgeous babe who just can't keep a decent boyfriend. Yeah, sure. To me, that was the most impossible thing about the plot. They picked a real piece of eye candy. Nothing against her acting, it's just far more unrealistic to see that than the instant cure for this mysterious disease (another plot twist) that the scientists cooked up in just a few days.

I go into these movies expecting wide plot holes and this movie was no exception. The ending was too predictable, but I'm glad it went the way it did instead of what could have been a total bummer ending. If that had happened, this would be a one star movie.

All in all, I was glad I was able to sit down and watch it. Great escapism. Recommended.

As a disaster flick fan I have a special tolerance for low budget disaster flicks; I can pretty much turn off my brain and just go with the flow. If you are similarly endowed you will probably enjoy this one too.

I was watching it in our den when my wife came in and thought we had seen this one before; I told her it was new but the plot and dialog was familiar. We both got a laugh out of that and agreed that many of the disaster films have much in common. In spite of that I watched this one all the way through and found it tolerably interesting. The special effects are adequate as is the sound; the acting does not really interfere with the plot and on occasion draws one into the story.

I suspect that anyone not interested in the disaster flick genre may have trouble watching this all the way through; those of us who do will have no trouble involving ourselves with the characters and the action.

It's not a bad film and those who are developing a DVD collection of disaster flicks will likely want to include this one too.

Low budget disaster film hampered by cheesy special effects and a boring subplot. It's not awful but it's just nothing different than the other similar low budget disaster flicks. Joe Lando gives it the college try but Claudia Christian is wasted in her very brief role and Cooper Harris overacts shamelessly. Opt for 2012 instead.

Caught this on NetFlix. It's not the worst thing in the world, but some of the effects are pretty cheesy, even for B-type sci-fi movies. The initial meteor hit contaminating ground water miles away nearly instantly? Uh...just how did that happen? Nobody hears of how to distill water to purify? Nobody has reverse osmosis purifiers? Even a puddle is contaminated? Ummm....junk science entirely. Bad acting, typical great shot bad guys and terrible shot good guys. Always just one gun, nobody ever picks up the guns from the dead bad guys and somehow this all ends up (of course) in LA. Is that so they could keep the budget even lower? Oh well...could be worse. Don't pay a lot for this one...better to find it free at the library or catch it on Netflix.

We thought this might be another "Christian disaster" like the Mayan one, but the "christian labels" on the case could be ignored. Other than a "going to church" and being in a church, briefly, this was a pretty conventional, and well-done disaster film. Excellent characters and good disaster events. No more religious than any other disaster film.
Some good effects, very exciting and good people.

While the acting was tolerable to good (main characters only, the plot and special effects were not worth watching.

Many of this genre are mediocre to fair at best, even the plot for 2012 could have been better. (I mean an old camper and a small plane just taking of sucessfully escapes the pyroclastic flow of a super volcano???? COME ON!!!)

This film is a total waste of time and money.

I love disaster movies. I just finished watching this one on the SyFy network. You don't expect great art on SyFy, but most of their movies are entertaining. This one, however, is just horrible. The main problem is the plot, or lack of one. The facts are quickly established, and then for most of the movie we watch as the protagonist, and the woman he picks up, try and find the man's wife and child. The family was separated early on, in one of many incomprehensible scenes that left me scratching my head. The worst scenes depict several CDC workers (Centers for Disease Containment?) and their efforts to save some people who were evacuated from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. With the whole world seemingly facing disaster, the plight of these people take center stage. At the end of the movie, the man, his wife, and his daughter are rescued by a government helicopter. The CDC workers cheer at the news, even though Los Angeles has just been hit by a big meteor chunk, presumably killing thousands. Stay away from this movie and it's interminable montages of the poor lead actor (Joe Lando) searching for his family. It's just not worth your time.

This is the worst movie every made. Yes, I know "Plan 9 from outer space" holds that title, but at least that is funny. This is the worst garbage I've ever watched. Here are some of the goofs (contains spoilers):

- All the governments know about this, and send rockets to destroy it in the beginning, it's that big.
- The NASA guys send up rockets with the ESC key.
- The rockets escapes the atmosphere
- The hero is afraid of heights, it's made a big deal of this, yet no explanation why it is important
- The bad guys kill indiscriminately, and there are a lot of them
- Two FBI agents cannot hit a barn door even if they had stabilisers on the gun and they were bolted down. The bad guys are of course marksmen
- The meteorites contaminate the water BEFORE it hits earth
- People die after 12 days of contamination, but people starts dying when the first meteorites hit. From the contamination.
- A colleague of the hero gets sick in the beginning of the movie, and subsequently dies. An ambulance it called out, and they have something that looks like an epi-pen. Just as they are about to administer it, an alarm sounds, and they drop everything and run out. The hero picks up the pen and other supplies they left behind. They are later killed by a meteorite.
- The hero treks from LV to LA on foot. He finds bottled water rather easily, and never displays signs of dehydration. At the same time, this is mostly what the bad guys are after: water.
- On his journey, he meets a woman that drank a soft drink and got sick. He administer the epi-pen medication, and mouth-to-mouth, and it revives her. She walks with him to LA
- The epi-pen seems to kill bad guys.
- The hero's daughter gets sick when the film starts, but lives until the end, when our hero miraculously manages to save her with some serum they don't know whether will work or not
- The largest meteorite destroys LA, but doesn't produce much dust

I _love_ disaster C-movies, and Disaster Saturday/Sundays on Syfy is a favourite of mine. I was so excited to watch this, but it is SO bad I had to take a break from it. It is a horrible, horrible film. Avoid, avoid, avoid!!!