Christmas Icetastrophe

A meteorite brings ice and freezing temperatures, which threatens to harm the residents of a small Montana town at Christmas.

It would be nice to be able to say good things about this film, but there really is nothing nice to say. The script is nonsense, the science completely made up (remember when SyFy had heart?) and none of the actors seem anything special. The romantic aspect is garbage, with two overall pale kids pretending to be cold... and not trying very hard, because the girl never even puts her hood up.

Someone thought they were being clever by naming the rival families Ratchet and Crooge, an obvious allusion to "A Christmas Carol". The head of the Crooge family is Ben, clearly a shortening of Ebenezer. But the problem is that the name "Crooge" sounds so forced coming out of the characters' mouths... there had to be a better way.

Okay, so I'll say this...the movie was nice but I could have done without all of the lead girl's screaming. She was a little annoying and I did not like her brother at all so I was glad when he was out of the picture. Other than that, I'd say that it's worth the watch. Side note: Her love interest, the young guy with the dark hair reminds me a lot of Edward (Robert P.) from the Twilight series. He's kinda sexy!!!

It was very close to being so bad that it was fun to watch, but it lacked the necessary tongue in cheek or at least going over the top. In the end it was boring, really boring, while taking itself seriously. For something that doesn't make any sense, the film ran like its makers expected viewers to take it seriously as well.

For me the only notable thing was that the main cast was mostly taken from the Continuum TV show. Other than that everything was really silly, just not silly enough to entertain.

But that's just me. If you believe in meteor(ite)s that can lead to growing ice crystals that suck the heat from an area the size of a small town, while not interfering with the rest of the world climate, then this is the film for you.

Icetastrophe is not a completely unwatchable movie and SyFy have done worse, it is a better movie (if only marginally) than their previous seasonal offering the 12 Disasters of Christmas.

The movie does contain a few things that make it a little better than it could have been. A couple of the death scenes are cool, once you don't mind that they're not particularly inventive, and do have a little fun and suspense. Some of the scenery is reasonably attractive too, looking much more than basement or abandoned allotment quality, and there is the use of some nice seasonal songs that fit well (there should have been more though).

However, apart from the scenery the production values for Icetastrophe are poorly done, it's shot rather drearily, is drably lit and while there are worse special effects in SyFy movies they still look laughably fake (including ones that look like giant penises). The direction mostly ranges from flat to incompetent, only coming to life in some of the deaths. When the seasonal songs are not used, the movie is scored in an unappealingly loud monotonous drone, with muddied sound quality. The script is incredibly poor, with forced humour (mostly unintentional), tedious ham-fisted melodrama that bogs the movie down rather than adding anything and dialogue that often sounds like gibberish.

Very little compelling about the story either, as well as being as thin as ice it takes stupidity to extremes (even for science fiction, the science is as far away from believable as you can possibly go), continuity errors are so sloppy that you could have sworn there wasn't any and it suffers from a large lack of tension, fun or suspense (albeit with the odd moment) as a result of sluggish pacing and the overload of stupidity, my tolerance for silliness and stupidity is high but this was to the extent that it was impossible to take at face value or enjoy. The characters have no development to them and are devoid of personality too, while the acting is the usual messy mix of over-acting and blandness.

Overall, not completely unwatchable but left me ice cold on the whole. 3/10 Bethany Cox

The *only* good thing about this movie was the science lab scene with a rather holiday-enthused astronomer played by the brilliant Jonathon Young. Otherwise, this was the type of movie you only finish because you've already wasted so much time on it you have to keep watching to see JUST HOW BAD IT WILL GET... The story was ridiculous, the other actors were terrible and the special effects were worse than pathetic. I love a good sci-fi movie, but this was just a cheesy thriller with a crappy plot and nothing remotely convincing.