Not a bad film if you just want to relax and zone out. It's simplistic and predictable, but fine to watch. Effects are low budget, so you have to look past them. Overall, accept it for what it is. The only really negative thing I have to say about it is how much of a whiny wimp they made the son. 20 years old and no gumption; just ongoing whining. The main protagonist carries the film, but he's supposed to when you know that the govt baddies haven't got a full brain cell between them.
... View MoreWorst special effects ever and most clichés in the book. OK so its a made for TV movie but there are some standards worth adhering to like plausibility for example yes even in a fantasy. You immediately feel sorry for Neil Martin (Joel Gretsch) that he's the father of the dumbest most self satisfied... (My University professor dad is so stupid) ...half wit in the land. A boy, Colin Martin (Reilly Dolman) with so little intuition or empathy, not to mention an annoying smirk of self satisfaction that right the first moment you are hoping he gets struck by lightening. Also this thing of the characters watching as a disaster rolls towards them when you are screaming "Run, run you dumb... 'chappie, fellows...' (you know what I mean)" is so insulting to the intelligence. Yes I can understand people freezing and dying on the spot but not almost dying because they are just too dumb to move, especially as one is a professor, "Ooh look Cleetus, duh there's a big bolder coming down from duh sky and its going to hit us if we don't duh move!" The boy rubbishes the father's every theory and suggestion. He needs a good slap!. This kid was serving coffee from a stall at the beginning of the movie with no apparent understanding of science. "Plausibility?" You'd think that the father would have had a smarter son, unless of course he was doing booze and smoking grass in his younger child creating days or at least mom was. Meanwhile they've acquired a girl called Sophie (Andrea Brooks) also a scientist... kind of, and during a chase scene, between her and the boy, they run through a gamut of hysterical physical emotions that would take most movies two hours to justify. Anyway the plot rumbles on using every cliché in the book, narrow escapes, implausibly long fights and a member of the CIA in a helicopter so small he could only just fit next to the pilot. The CIA running out of cash? Perhaps the production company was. Just what Christopher Lloyd is doing in this movie is anybody's guess, still I did enjoy his ten minutes (or thereabouts). My favourite scene in the whole thing is the very last scene, the tying up of loose ends where Joel Gretsch makes a speech to camera meanwhile behind him, his son and the girl who have shown virtually no interest in each other, suddenly make meaningful eye contact - if you know what I mean - and go into an immediate embrace behind him thrusting their tongues down each other's throats. THAT had me rolling in the aisles. Truth be told, it was a lousy script and a tight budget that did for this movie..... in my opinion.
... View MoreIt's hard to do anything new when you're making a disaster film these days. That means the effects better be good and the calamities happening on screen should be of epic proportions. When putting together a B or C-type movie in the genre, it needs to be as ridiculous and humorous as can be (think "Sharknado"). SyFy Channel and Anchor Bay's newest offering, "Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse," doesn't meet either of these criteria.When a primitive astrology carving is unearthed in Peru, it triggers explosive meteor storms around the world. But this is only the beginning: Tsunamis, lightning storms, lava geysers, and giant waterspouts erupt globally, each disaster corresponding to a specific sign of the zodiac. Will a mysterious government agency now kill to hide a shocking planetary secret, or can a group of rogue scientists race against time and carnage to activate an ancient civilization's Armageddon machine?"Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" takes itself way too serious to be looked at as a fun escapist disaster film. There's no giant piranha or wacky hipsters to add a level of fun to the events transpiring on screen. All we get is a group of somber scientists running around while trying to keep from getting wiped out by CG walls of water and raining meteorites. The special effects make it hard to fully immerse yourself in "Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse." They look even worse than the typical Asylum films and that's bad. Sometimes, bad effects can work when they're meant to be funny. The filmmakers made "Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" way too solemn for that to be the case.The typical mix of genre actors that help lure fans in star in "Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse." Aaron Douglas from "Battlestar Galactica" plays a government agent. I did snicker when he used the word "frakkin'" as a tribute to his character on the epic sci-fi series. Christopher Lloyd plays an eccentric inventor (sound familiar?) who gets about five minutes of screen time before being killed off. Upon experiencing one of Lloyd's inventions in the movie, a character wittily exclaims, "Great Scott!" These precious moments made my viewing experience at least partially tolerable."Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" is unrated because it premiered on the SyFy Channel. The movie is tame and relatively family-friendly. There's some violence, profanity, and frightening and intense sequences. It never gets too graphic or gory and I would recommend it for anyone 12 or over who know the difference between real life and make believe. Some religious folks might be put off by the movie being based on the Zodiac signs. They're never referred to in the astrological sense. The actual shapes of the symbols and their order are used to pinpoint the different disasters coming next. A couple of the characters insinuate their agnostic or atheistic views as well. Most sci-fi enthusiasts will find "Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" to be a waste of their precious time. It would be better spent re- watching "2012" or "Armageddon." As far as SyFy films are concerned, they've made better and wittier ones in the past. "End of the World" comes to mind immediately.
... View More"Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" is a very generic and stereotypical disaster movie that follows the dummies handbook of how to make a disaster movie. Everything in the movie was so predictable and scripted that you saw it coming a mile away. And this really brought down the overall enjoyment of the movie.Sure, the movie was entertaining enough for what it is, but if you have seen any other disaster movie, then you basically have seen this one as well - in theory.The story is about a series of disasters that happen around the world, and the future of the entire planet rests in the hands of a few people that run against time to save the Earth.Yeah, basically the same as most other disaster movies. And for some odd reason all these events were happening all around these people. It just didn't make sense. Why would all these cataclysmic events take place around these and not at random locations around the world? Effects-wise, then "Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" was adequate. The effects worked well enough for what they were supposed to portray. But they weren't mind-blowing or overly impressive. So don't get your hopes up for these.As for the acting, well people were doing good enough jobs with their given roles. Joel Gretch was the one who carried the movie, no doubt about it."Zodiac: Signs of the Apocalypse" is a very average run-of-the-mill disaster movie that offers nothing new to the genre. You watch this movie once and never again.
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