Whenever I think of Roland Emmerich as a director these days, I just think about the majority of his releases during the late 90's and early 00's.
Back then, he made some pretty entertaining mainstream features. From the disaster blockbusters such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow to historical war epic The Patriot and the sci-fi spectacle of Stargate.
Nowadays, his more recent projects I feel are generally disappointing and lacking that fun value that we know Emmerich can create.
When I read the plot and saw the trailer for this, I was expecting more of the forgettable recent flicks. But I remained hopeful as if done right it could break out as a guilty pleasure for me.
From the word go, I was already seeing a rip-off mix of Gravity and The Martian. After that, it felt as if we were covering a lot of ground at an alarmingly rate.
The pacing in the plot and sub-plots was pretty insane. Beliefs being changed and people moving from various locations at an impossible speed strangely reminded me of the atrocious Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. But with a bigger budget.
In a film where gravity disappears, logic had quickly gone out the window long before that.
There's no real stand-out performances and with a pretty poor script given to them, I cannot really criticise the acting too much. I always feel Patrick Wilson is a safe a pair of hands and delivers and serviceable performance to the content that was given to him. John Bradley had decent moments of comedic relief and had believable chemistry with Wilson.
I was surprised to see Halle Berry be part of something like this and her performance went through the motions and was probably the least ridiculous part of the film.
Charlie Plummer was perfectly fine and gave enough energy to make the sub-plot feel important.
Was also shocked to see Michael Pena in a fairly small role.
With this being a disaster film, the visual effects need to work. While I wouldn't put them up there with the high quality CGI you see in most major studio releases, it was good enough to make the action sequences engaging.
I could go on forever on the issues I had with it. So all I'll say is that it's very stupid, silly and pretty dis-jointed with lazy writing. But it still managed to keep me somewhat entertained for it to not be a total disaster. I think it is saved by a budget that made it look like a major studio release. But in reality, it should be shown on the Horror Channel along with the Arachnoquake and the Megashark franchise.
It's definitely aimed at that type of audience that go to the cinema to switch off their brain and just be entertained. You'll certainly be entertained. But I'm not sure by what exactly.
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