The Apocalypse

Even though I checked this movie out for free, it was a huge waste of my time. Pathetic acting, terrible special effects, and a plot that goes nowhere are the BEST things about this movie. Don't waste your time.

If you manage to get through the entire film and give it more thought than it warrants, you may find seeds of what could have been a good film scattered throughout.

Sandra Bernhard did a fair job with her leading role, only to be let down by the rest of the cast, the writing, directing, and effects (I suppose the sets were passable). Laura San Giacomo gives possibly the worst performance, completely over the top spouting incoherent snatches of Shakespeare. It appears that her part was filmed later and edited in, as she never interacts with the other actors and the "hacker" uses male pronouns when referring to her and her image.

This seemed as if several amateurs each directed a couple randomly-selected scenes without regard to each other's work, as characters are played very differently in adjoining scenes with no sense of development. The film ends suddenly and poorly, as if someone with an eye to the budget yelled "Cut, print!" the instant that the money ran out.

Perhaps this film itself was a salvage operation, where the shoot terminated prematurely and the studio edited whatever had already been filmed into something they could release upon an unsuspecting public.

'The apocalypse' is the sort of film that immediately, within mere minutes, leads us to question how it is we came across the feature in the first place. A prologue, inserted in the middle of the opening credits (?), is strenuously forced, fast-paced, and disordered, and unclear for the fact of it. We also get a first glimpse of editing that is dubious, and special effects that are several years outdated even in 1997. Thereafter, early exposition is ham-handed and a little less than fully convincing. But, you know what, especially for as preposterous as the premise is, I was willing to overlook this messiness to see where 'The apocalypse' was going to end up. If nothing else, watching Laura San Giacomo recite Shakespeare with the same delirious vigor as an opera's mad scene, in the first fraction of the feature, would surely be worth the remainder of these 90-odd minutes. Right?

I don't mean to disparage director Hubert de la Bouillerie outright - he has a fair number of credits in other capacities - but his guiding hand as maestro of the movie leaves much to be desired. I assume it's with his instruction that the cast generally give performances that often seem disinterested, like the scenes we get in the final cut were just first takes, or practice runs. Meanwhile, once the story more meaningfully begins around the 30-minute mark, plot development is alternately frenetic, somewhat haphazard, and disjointed - or weak, and halfhearted. Likewise, J. Reifel's screenplay is just kind of all over the place. Dialogue is filled with technobabble and questionable small talk; characterizations are flat, hollow, and far from complete, each little more than set pieces.

Individual scenes, as written, seem like they could have constituted a compelling feature if more care were taken to fit them into the narrative. And at that, more than anything else, the story is a godawful mess tendered with glaring indifference and inattention to flow, coherence, or cohesiveness. Why did Goad set the ship on its course? How was that course progression seemingly disrupted, setting up the vessel as a future salvage opportunity for the plot? How did J. T.'s assembled crew learn about that ship? What is Vendler's deal, exactly? Why was it that he was considered for the mission in the first place? Connective threads between scenes, between story beats, and between characters and background aren't necessarily absent, but they're nigh invisible.

I suppose the set design and decoration is fine, and consideration for lighting. Camerawork is unremarkable, but suitable. And... well, I think that's it. That's the praise I have to offer for the bulk of the picture.

There are a small handful of good ideas in here, but none of them are realized with convincing passion, authenticity, any sense of diligence at all. None of them make up for the extraordinary, overwhelmingly tawdry pablum that 'The apocalypse' represents. This is such accursed slop that it utterly fails to keep us engaged, and I think to give it our full concentration would be considered an act of self-harm.

It turns out that those first few minutes, in which Laura San Giacomo delivers a monologue from 'Hamlet,' really were the highlight of the film. And, no, it wasn't worth watching the remainder of the runtime. After the opening credits finish, you can move on to something else, because you've seen everything of value in 'The apocalypse.'

I don't know what just happened to me. Sandra Bernhard was fighting David Crosby while the little hooker friend from Pretty Woman was performing "Scenes From Shakespeare." You read that right. It's a good thing that the MPAA does not enact capital punishment, because everyone involved would have been strung up as examples to aspiring actors, writers and directors with more enthusiasm than talent. Painful. Pro tip: adding (AND ENDLESSLY REPEATING THE SAME) lines from Shakespeare does not make your movie good; it actually highlights how crummy the movie is. The writing was puerile, the acting was a visual Columbine, and the plot couldn't make it. Not all of the cats in the world could have made this movie enjoyable or even watchable. If faced with the dilemma of watching this movie or...doing anything else, I can strongly and authoritatively recommend anything else.

This movie is not as bad as it may seem at first. The screenplay is ludicrous sometimes, but the actors save the day: Sandra Bernhard plays the captain of a spaceship who hates the rest of the world and spends her time off in bars, kicking some teeth in. Tougher than Ripley ("Alien"), less scrupulous than Han Solo ("Star Wars"). Frank Zagarino is an intense villain who gets plenty of opportunity to hurt and kill people. And Laura San Giacomo I remember from "Quigley" is amazing as the crazy programmer using Shakespeare quotes for passwords.

Talking about quotes, here's my favorite line from the movie (re-translated from German dubbed version, so maybe not exactly the same words): "There's no danger our ship could be hit by a meteor. It is too big." Say you love logical thinking.

Anyway, I found this quite entertaining despite several flaws in the story (voted 5/10). The worst one: we are not told what became of the programmer, she just disappears from the spaceship. One little correction: the cargo on board threatening to destroy the Earth is not nuclear warheads as mentioned in the plot outline, it's an element named "Solarium" that will blow up when staying too long in a magnetic field.