Synopsis
When a mysterious planet crosses the sun, global catastrophes are unleashed. A rogue scientist is the key to deciphering the symbols and humanity's only chance at survival.
Starring Joel Gretsch, Reilly Dolman, Emily Holmes, Andrea Brooks and Christopher Lloyd.
Runtime 89 minutes
Where to watch Prime Video and probably some dubious channels on your TV packages.
Review
We get thrown into the disasters pretty quickly, so quickly in fact that I really thought I'd missed something, you will be glad to know that it's isn't so complex that you can't pick it up, it's just ridiculous.
The main characters of Neil and Colin are introduced very quickly and we get a rather clumsy potted backstory before they get swept up into the action. Joel Gretsch is a face I know from various things but it's The 4400 that sticks out the most, his acting in this isn't much of a stretch beyond what he's had experience with and he probably has the best character next to Marty.
Apocalypse Tomorrow, or Zodiac: Signs Of The Apocalypse, ticks all the classic TV disaster movie points... animals fleeing from impending danger, terrible CGI, vehicles and people being able to outrun nature, terrible CGI, and a dubious love interest moment... credit where credit is due, they did catch me out with this one. What I was severely upset by though was the fact that we hear about devastation around the world and there were no crappy shots of world famous landmarks being destroyed, don't they know that's what we come to these films for?!
You may know that I hate bouncy camera work, I was pleasantly surprised when (excluding in-car scenes) the camera was solid and not frustrating, TV movies tend to be a little erratic on that point. Sadly they do randomly have one scene where it appears that the cameraman was wearing trampoline shoes while going through caffeine withdrawal, even more confusingly there was a scene where I could have forgiven it happening but they chose a very calm moment to have it and it did nothing but annoy.
The props that are introduced suddenly looked very familiar and if I didn't know any better I'd have said they were original concept pieces for Stargate that had been found in a shed somewhere. The physical pieces don't actually look too bad visually, but the CGI is a mix of passable, bad and terrible, at no time convincing. Bizarrely that gives it pretty good marks for this sort of film.
As with many films that want to be more action than story our characters all get to jump to conclusions and accurate deductions without any work being put in. Significantly in this one it means that right near the beginning we jump from one scene to another and skip what feels like two scenes in the middle. From a tense situation everything goes calm instantly and everything is back to normal. With some better scripting there are a lot of moments like this that could have been avoided.
I feel like my score could be misleading, was this film bad? Yes. But it's just ridiculous enough to be amusing.
What should you do
You should absolutely not watch this unless you like this kind of punishment.
Moment to watch out for
When they manage to Road Runner it.
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