Just to get this straight, I have absolutely nothing against Syfy Originals in general. Mostly, they're refreshingly irony-free throwbacks to classic drive-in b-movies and those giant monster flicks that Hollywood and independent studios alike tend to neglect. This one, however, was quite different, and not necessarily for the best.
I guess my biggest issue, aside from the absolutely worthless protagonist, was the presentation of the story. An amazingly large part of the movie consists of very little more than a group of scientists *observing* the actual location of interest via monitors and meters. They analyze the data and discuss the mysterious threat that's supposed to be rising by the minute with as much melodrama as possible, but the fact remains that all we see is people *talking* about a dangerous situation from a safe distance. It hampers the sense of tension that's needed for a "Countdown to Doomsday" movie to work. It's not necessarily boring as much as it feels like a distraction from what *should* be the real focus, namely the actual sites of the strange phenomena. There are exceptions, of course; some of the later action scenes and special effects sequences really are pretty well executed for a TV movie, but they're only a minuscule portion of the whole.
All in all, "Stonehenge Apocalypse" is one of the weaker Syfy Originals I've seen. It's undeniably much more coherent and serious than many of the others, but it thoroughly lacks true excitement and tension. The fact that most of its major plot devices are mere references to established real world pseudo-sciences, inelegantly thrown in there like quotes from their respective Wikipedia articles, certainly doesn't help.
I guess my biggest issue, aside from the absolutely worthless protagonist, was the presentation of the story. An amazingly large part of the movie consists of very little more than a group of scientists *observing* the actual location of interest via monitors and meters. They analyze the data and discuss the mysterious threat that's supposed to be rising by the minute with as much melodrama as possible, but the fact remains that all we see is people *talking* about a dangerous situation from a safe distance. It hampers the sense of tension that's needed for a "Countdown to Doomsday" movie to work. It's not necessarily boring as much as it feels like a distraction from what *should* be the real focus, namely the actual sites of the strange phenomena. There are exceptions, of course; some of the later action scenes and special effects sequences really are pretty well executed for a TV movie, but they're only a minuscule portion of the whole.
All in all, "Stonehenge Apocalypse" is one of the weaker Syfy Originals I've seen. It's undeniably much more coherent and serious than many of the others, but it thoroughly lacks true excitement and tension. The fact that most of its major plot devices are mere references to established real world pseudo-sciences, inelegantly thrown in there like quotes from their respective Wikipedia articles, certainly doesn't help.