Dark Storm

I had to stay up with my young son last night and thought Dark Storm looked vaguely interesting compared to the other pap on offer.

No.

It was the aura of car crash TV that kept me watching. A fat Stephen Baldwin acting worse than my armchair does. My word, I've never seen anyone so bad in a film.

His scientist sidekick and the villain at least were professional and I could believe they were actors, but Mr. Baldwin gave the standout worst "acting performance" I have ever had the misfortune of sitting in front of. Whatever you do, do not waste an hour or two of your precious life on this utter shower of *&^%. Spend the time more fruitfully in staring at a blank wall, or cutting your toenails.

I have to admit I watched it to the very end - barely -without falling asleep!

This is not a repulsive bad movie, but an annoying one! The acting is so universally horrible, I said to myself, "I could do a better job - where do I sign-up?" This thought entered my mind so often I started wondering how much these godforsaken actors where paid for their severe lack of skills! For them it must be a thrill to know you at least made it to DVD, even if you never made to the big screen! But for the rest of us watching Darkstorm it was terribly distracting!

The special effects were enjoyable and the fantasy element was interesting. It's a shame who ever directed and produced this film didn't pony-up some more bucks to get some real acting talent! This could have been a half way decent sci-fi/fantasy film!

It doesn't get much sillier than this for the serious sci-fi buff, but as low-expectation, old fashioned "Saturday afternoon matinée" diversion, it's entertaining enough.

A slightly overweight Stephen Baldwin, in a follow-up to an even sillier 2006 sci-fi opus, "Earth Storm" about using bombs to put a crumbling moon back together, invents a weapon using "dark matter" (apparently a more photogenic, controllable version of anti-matter) and generatable thunderstorms. Naturally, things go awry, foolish military men make stupid, ill-considered snap judgements causing even greater problems, traitors steal the weapon and (reaching the heights of "Marvel Comic silliness") Baldwin absorbs some of the "dark matter", making himself a self-generating (but only defensive for some reason - until the villain does it) weapon! The big screen Spiderman films made as much scientific sense (why can't screenwriters give us entertainment with stories JUST as exciting that gets the science right and doesn't insult our intelligence!?) but had more consistent characters and motivations.

If you can ignore the basically incredible weapon which is the McGuffin which gets the plot rolling, the piece is fun on its own terms - no worse than Disney's 1979 "Black Hole" (which famously made its title dark star a glowing whirlpool). The Disney had firmer scientific underpinnings but worse acting and special effects, so it's sort of a fair trade off.

The always engaging Rob LaBelle makes a fine scientific sidekick (who actually does most of the work - not to mention acting), and Gardiner Millar as the chief villain is solid - even when the special effects have him reenacting the last scenes of the first Indiana Jones film.

Undemanding fun, but keep your expectations low.

This movie is not a blockbuster by any stretch, the acting, especially from Balwin was uninspiring and flat, the 'science' was almost non existent and some of the props\outfits looked like they were taken from the local op shop.

On the plus side, it was reasonably fast paced with passable CGI effects for the budget, there was some character development and there was some good support acting.

Overall just below a pass, but certainly watchable as a light thriller, don't expect too much and if you're a sci-fi fan like me, just ignore all the holes in the premise of harnessing Dark Matter...

While I'm not sure what constitutes a spoiler, I can tell you that 'Dark Storm' constitutes a really bad "Sci-fi original" mini-movie. Stephen Baldwin looks and acts terribly- as a protagonist, it is quite difficult to relate to him at all as his performance is beyond flat. The special effects are better than most made-for-TV movies but do little to capture the imagination. There are bad guy minions in this movie that look like ninjas and a fair amount of scenes in which the character's voice inflection is completely inappropriate, not to mention the fact that instead of at least attempting to fake scientific jargon, lots of questions are answered with, "I can't tell you that, it's classified," or "it's so complicated, you wouldn't understand." Try me...