The Day the Earth Stopped

Within the first ten minutes I was thinking hard about if this was a very elaborate Youtube spoof or a serious film. The acting is so undeniably awful it makes you cringe. The camera work is cheap and amateur while the sound and lighting could be done by an undergrad making their first drama. You think I'm joking? Look for the massively over exposed shot at 00:09:98.

It just gets worse from here. Very low budget, poorly written and astounding that it made it this far. There is a weird mix between shots that blew the budget and money saving stuff that makes things look just plain nasty. How many times have you seen a government agent jumping from an expensive black truck only to start setting up a fold out table for his equipment? Mix this with cheap CGI and you have an instant looser. Should have been killed in pre-production. Watch if you want to know how not to make a feature film.

*shakes head*

Terrible, terrible, what were they thinking? Bad Acting. Bad Directing. Bad Story Line or Script. Made me wonder if they get someone to watch what they've made prior to releasing a movie. I actually sat through nearly half this movie for a laugh, then I just fast forwarded in big chunks.

Oh, we two Aliens, we wont let them talk to anyone important and we'll keep them in an old abandoned warehouse and let a low ranking officer beat them up a bit. First 2 minutes of the film look promising, don't let it fool you.

Nothing good about this movie sorry.

Did I mention this was terrible?

OK this film is getting a lot of unjust hate here. I think a lot of reviewers on IMDB should give up watching B-Movies and stick to blockbusters. I mentioned B-Movie, I wouldn't really class this as a B-Movie it doesn't have any of the qualities you'd associate with traditional B-Movies exploitation, grindhouse, pulp, cheese, slasher or any raw or over-the-top vibe to it. I would class it more like a TV Movie as it is squeaky clean, apart from the nudity at the beginning. Not a film your gonna want to watch again, but it is definitely watchable. Some of the acting is goofy but most of it pulls through good, the story line wasn't too bad except for random fillers that took away from the film rather than add anything, obviously filmed in a rented office somewhere and the car chase and baby scene are pretty poor. CGI was good and for a low budget film not bad at all. The addition of the beautiful Sky (Sinead McCarthy) was a nice touch. Overall not great or good but not bad either, watchable.

My grade-school aged children confused this with the similarly named Hollywood movie. I tried to warn them, but they insisted this looked good. The acting was so bad I left the room about 30 minutes in. My son called me back a few minutes later to point out how bad the *lighting effects* were. He's never critical of acting, let alone of lighting. Honestly, if a 5th grader is able to find serious flaws everybody involved with this film should be ashamed.

I'd like to say something good about this film, but I can't think of anything. At least in my case it was a free rental, so I didn't waste any money on it.

Some solid ideas save this from being a total washout.

Have to be honest and say that production values for the average 5 year old birthday party are higher than this - yet it is strangely watchable - it has moments that make you wonder what will happen next and how it will all end...

All in all if Sci-Fi wasn't your thing before you sat down to watch it won't be after either - but if any Sci-Fi is better than none at all you might be surprised at the fact that is is, despite a very low budget, actually watchable....

And it does kind of deal with apocalyptic themes head-on, all in all B minus.