Well, where to start ...First off, this is the most scientific inaccurate movie I've ever seen. Not only that, they are butchering it to a degree where it gets pretty hilarious. OK, to be fair we don't know what happens if we shoot high energy stuff into the Sun. But if that was the only thing ...Secondly, there are several goofs. For instance there is a scene where they show something on a computer monitor which was supposed to be their "software" and you shortly see a "play / pause / stop / ffwd ..." toolbar appearing in the bottom right of the monitor. Or when Beverly and Jack Hillcroft had the car accident because of an EMP discharge, the lights of the car were still on when they left it. Etc, etc, etc. There are lots of these little things.But still, even tho the movie has a pretty generic plot and an interpretation of science which is ridiculous, I still gave it a chance and it had something which kept me watching for that 3 hours.There was nothing wrong with the actors or their acting. Even the idea isn't that bad (at least of the first half), but just poorly realized. I mean we don't have that much "Sun doomsday movies", do we?The acting wasn't Oscar-worthy, but still good enough to get you connected to the characters, their story, their hopes, sorrows and happiness.Also the CGI was pretty good. I've seen worse in Hollywood movies (*cough* Hobbit *cough*).The biggest problem this movie has is clearly the realization of their plot and script and their interpretation of science. I think in the 70's and 80's this movie would be great, because today we have a far more advanced standard of knowledge, of our planet and the Sun, etc. So therefore the common audience today expects more accurate "fiction", so to say.Second, its length. It was obviously supposed to be a two-part movie. However, they offer it as one 3h movie in Amazon Prime. You can of course split it in two sessions, if you like. But I guess most viewers who quit after the first half didn't watch the second half anyway. So what ...I think the movie would have been better received if they spent more time carving out the script and maybe talking to college physics and geology students about how to realize that scenario so that it could work.Personally I think it was worth watching. I would recommend the movie to those who have already seen everything and don't know what to watch.

The script isn't that terrible, although I suspect the premise of the film carries it somewhat. It was a shame that it has been so poorly produced.Every piece of the story is labored and is a perfect example of how modern films are scared to leave anything to the imagination. An example is the scene in what presumably is the White Situation Room or PEOC. The President has just shouted orders at people while repeatedly reminding the viewer that he is the President. He gets a message saying the Nasa Administrator is on the phone, and answers the phone as "President {such and such}". I get it, he is the President. Tedious.

IMO sci-fi has two parts...'science' and 'fiction'…this series misses both, Lets start with the 'fiction' part slash plot ….government hi-tech experiment goes bad…sun is going ham on planet earth…human hero 'bad-boy-knows-it-all' saves earth from the sun…then he knows how to restart the core…then he restarts the core with a machine that he kept in his barn … and finally he gets the girl!My personal metric is which of this ''original story'' couldn't have been written by a 10 year old...verdict: not much … have to give credit though for the 'really fictional' parts i could spot.. the fact that he did all this while getting chased by the US military – and the part that he could operate a multimillion-high-tech-sun-magnetosphere-disruption- facility with just his daughter and her boyfriend … ah and the president dies of falling debris because he was giving a speech under a half collapsed building <- this was a good one About the 'science' part -Not there- And no ..you don't have to be or pretend to be a scientist to figure out that downtown Chicago, Big Ben and Athens is ridiculously unlikely to be destroyed by satellite debris. Or if you turn a blind eye on the solar- flare-induced-6.5-earthquake, how can you not wonder why the heck the epicenter was somewhere in East Coast US? I watch sci-fi and enjoy it because it could show a glimpse of what might happen after 50-100-10000000 with a lots of sauce of course, but with some respect to some scientific hard facts .. this film was about what could never happen in a trillion years in the most remote parallel universe.Acting was alright I guess ...

Out of the four mini-series personally viewed in the past two weeks airing on the SyFy channel, CAT.8 is better than Ring of Fire(though at least that had Terry O'Quinn) and especially the irredeemably terrible Meteor with Christopher Lloyd. But of the four the best was Eve of Destruction, although that was a long way from great that looked reasonably good and at least four of the actors were convincing. CAT.8 also has some better-than-average acting, Matthew Modine is a commendable lead, and the production values(apart from some hokey effects) are reasonable, basic though with some signs of atmospheric. On the whole however CAT.8 doesn't work. What really lets things down is the story and the science. To say that the science is questionable is an understatement in itself, if anything it is a disaster, so bad that experts would feel tempted to bail out halfway through the first half. It honestly sounded like the writers were making things up with no research and it was very difficult to believe any of it. As a result the story was implausible and had little if any credibility. Unfortunately also for the story it didn't feel enough to sustain the three hours, so it felt like a thin structure interwoven with a lot of padding, ham-fisted melodrama/exposition, underdeveloped sub-plotting and an overlong length. If you think the first half takes too long to get going and is implausible, wait until you see the second half, like with the Meteor, Ring of Fire and even Eve of Destruction it gets increasingly dull and illogical. The script is underwritten, cheesy and very awkward, another one of those instances where it came through clearly that the writers hadn't properly checked to see whether what they'd written and given the actors made sense. The music is turgid and unmemorable, the pacing is pedestrian and stretches the story out too much, the characters are nowhere near developed enough which is inexcusable for a mini-series of this length and generally CAT.8 feels under-directed and characterless. On the whole, there is worse out there but this was rather poor stuff, the best assets are the production values and the acting but the story, script, pacing and especially the science bog things down considerably. 3/10 Bethany Cox