User Reviews

I love science fiction and I am normally perfectly willing to suspend normal logic and common sense to enjoy a good Sci-Fi movie or book.

Earth's Final Hours started off well enough. Sets were pretty well done, editing was nice and tight and the action moved along at a pretty good pace. Acting was sufficient with minor digs for an underwhelming performance by Cameron Bright (the son) and some serious over acting near the end by Roark Critchlow.

Unfortunately things went really silly for the last twenty minutes or so of the movie. We find ourselves in a situation were there are literally seconds left until the end of the planet. Yet, when Julia Benson is wounded, everyone drops their "second by second precision satellite guidance efforts" to rush to her aid and to see how she is doing. Then they stand around and visit about it. Hey, if life on earth is about to end, don't you think you might want to stay by your equipment to stop it?

And then in an outdoor scene near the end, the character Lockman (Michael Kopsa) tries to destroy a satellite antenna which happens to be sitting on the ground within easy reach. Now here we witness a guy bright enough to be a Division Chief for the CIA and he tries to disable the antenna by bending down to whack meekly at the lower outside rim of the dish. Like he has to duck around the transducer sticking out of the middle of the antenna to find a place he can hit without doing any damage. That scene was so painfully, obviously stupid (as was much of the last 20 minutes of the film) that I actually found myself moaning out loud. It totally spoiled what was otherwise an enjoyable viewing.

I don't think this movie ever had the potential to be great, but it didn't deserve to be so badly done at the end that it is literally painful to watch.

Another day, another Sy-Fy (do you think they understand how ridiculous that contraction is?) production. Guess what? It's awful! I know, right? You'd have thought by now they would have taken the criticism of thousands of people on board and worked to produce movies that don't make you want to smash your face into a brick wall in stunned disbelief.

Sadly, it appears they are incapable of learning. Also, it appears, they are adept at hiring people to write sci-fi that exhibit an extreme form of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Namely, they know enough to think they are clever, but actually are dumb as stumps.

Apart from the utterly bobbins plot, which is just beyond ridicule, they proceed to ignore even basic science involving the characters and their abilities.

Guns never jam or seem to need reloading. Satellite dishes never need to be aligned before use. Twenty year old technology works at first power up. The list is potentially endless.

I felt sorry for Robert Knepper. He was by far the most capable actor here and actually tried really hard with his role. Sadly, his co-stars didn't put the same amount of effort into their parts. As a result, it seemed like his son and girlfriend had mental difficulties grasping the concept of the end of the world. They didn't. The actors playing them just had difficulties being actors.

This effort also suffers from the "shaky-cam-to-make-it-look-more-real-and-exciting!" effect. It was clear that the cameraman had no direction other than "don't hold the camera still." Or maybe the guy holding the camera suffered from cerebral palsy, I don't know. Whatever, it's a nausea-inducing wobble-fest that gets annoying almost immediately.

All in all, this one, like all SyFy movies, smells like something your cat squirted out of its rectum after rummaging in your junk-food-addicted neighbour's garbage bin.

It's the kind of movie that makes you wonder if you've fallen through a hole in space and time and ended up in an alternate universe where the laws of physics are not just different, they're ludicrous.

Just who is the target audience for this tripe? Do SyFy think so little of their viewers that they think any old bullshit they film will do? Surely they'd be better off spending the production budget on securing broadcast rights to actual movies, rather than trying to make their own? I really don't know what SyFy are doing. I really don't. They can produce some decent TV shows, but movies appear beyond them. What's worse, they are associating actors who should know better with utter garbage.

SyFy channel....please stop!

You know it's going to be bad when a bloke cops a bit of space debris which hurtles not only through his chest, but the the earth, and the unfortunate man survives long enough with no chest to reveal the location of secret base! Oh Please! How many words are you going to be able to get out with no lungs, and for that matter, a hole where your heart used to be. As usual, the disaster take place in the USA. The bit of space debris starts there and pops out after a speedy journey through the middle of our planet. The evil man from the government tries to stop the good man from the government from saving the world. The bad man has some deluded idea that he can shield just his little bit of the planet and all will be well. There good man of course kidnaps, er sorry, rescues a bloke who programmed a couple of huge satellites with floppy discs (as if that in itself is some kind of programming language). It was all part of a secret government experiment which was only there to explain how a few million bucks of hardware got into space. As standard these days, the good blokes kid sorts us all out because the teenager is a whiz at hacking which clearly qualifies him to speak to a 20 year old space computer. And together with the good blokes friend they all band together to restart the computers at the secret base, get them to talk to the satellites, and get those satellites to point themselves at earth, turn on, and form some kind of magnetic field which will start the earth turning before it has stopped! Oh yeah, there is lots of gunfire and punching. I'm sorry, this is just awful. The story is ludicrous and the script weedy and thin. The actors do their best but you never really bond with them. In fact by the end you find yourself wishing the whole planet is going to be eaten alive by the magnetic storm which runs amok throughout. The highlight was the FX which were OK for a low brow low budget telliemovie. If you are home on a cold wet winters day and there is nothing else on, read a book but whatever you do don't waste your time on this garbage. I rather feel like I have lost consciousness just writing about it. That's rather sad as I'd only just recovered from watching it. Honestly just don't bother.

Quick Summary: It's a bomb.

This is yet another of the mind-numbing, inane films penned by writers who couldn't find their own heads with both hands and a "brainless twit" detector, and cranked out on a far-too-regular basis by the SyFy channel.

I shall not dwell on the acting, because let's face it: Who can concentrate on the acting when your neurons are recoiling in horror at the lines the actors are forced, (I suspect, at gunpoint), to say? Nor shall I long dwell on the laughably lame-brained scene in which a scientist with an enormous hole through his chest, (front-to-back, and through which, even Stevie Wonder could chuck a football), manages somehow, (chortle), to gasp out his final words, (which are, of course, cryptic--even though they are the key to "the very survival of mankind itself").

Incredibly, (by comparison with the next eighty minutes), that scene is one of the more believable moments in this disgrace. There is not a single shred of even grade-school scientific knowledge evident in this--supposedly, science fiction--film.

I felt considerable sympathy for the actors, most of whom, I feel sure, have sequestered themselves in remote caves, living on lichens and grubs rather than show themselves in public after this. Frankly, if I found myself cast in such an embarrassingly dreadful flick, my first thought would be to cast my agent into an active volcano.

The main premise--if you stoop to call it that--is that the Earth suddenly, instantly, stops rotating about its axis, (the mechanism by which this occurs is so dim-witted as not to be worthy of serious mention). Oddly, most people don't seem notice this drastic event, save for one or two who wonder why the sun is still overhead at midnight.

So. If the Earth *were* to stop suddenly, wouldn't you mention it to someone? Well, no, as it turns out, because you wouldn't be alive to do so--having been killed within microseconds as a result of the catastrophe.

Though you don't notice, (because it rotates *with* the Earth at the same speed), the atmosphere travels at a speed of about 1,100 miles-per-hour at the equator. Even if the Earth could, somehow, instantly stop rotating, the atmosphere wouldn't; suddenly supersonic winds, would sweep the Earth clear of you, your house, forests, skyscrapers, politicians, the entire body of work of Jerry Lewis, and the offices of the SyFy channel.

Even ignoring the reality of those winds, your own inertia would fling you into the stratosphere, along with every car, locomotive, building, oil tanker and chupacabra on the planet.

But wait! There's more!

The Earth masses some six sextillion tons: If it suddenly came to a screeching halt, well, the energy of that tremendous inertia has to go somewhere--and so it would. It would be expressed as heat. Lots of heat. We're talking a mind-bogglingly amount of heat, here. The entire planet would become almost instantaneously molten.

Between inertia, the hyper-hurricane winds and the all-encompassing lava, nothing whatsoever would survive: Not even that inedible fruitcake that gets re-gifted and passed on to successive generations during the holidays.

There is more than a century of excellent science fiction available--much in the public domain. Why, instead of harvesting that treasure-trove and producing works of quality, the executives at SyFy keep foisting such imbecility as "Earth's Final Hours" onto the public is an utter mystery. And an insult.

Not to mock to the Vietnam War protests, I nonetheless appeal to SyFy to "Stop The Bombing."

Did I mention the movie was awful?

There are so many things wrong with this movie, where to start.

People with a soccer ball size hole in their chest tend to not be able to talk.

Synopsis : Neutron star particle large enough and dense enough to go thru the entire earth damage our magnetosphere and stop the planet from rotating bringing on global extinction.

Given the current state of astrophysics the existence of such a particle is theoretically possible but that it would cause the type of damage to our planet is not even remotely possible.

Given the mass of the earth and it's sheer inertia it would take a lot more than a single particle no matter how dense to counteract that force.

Then there are those rays of solar radiation that seem to make it thru the magnetosphere and slice across the earth, hitting anything with a badge when they are about to arrest the well meaning hacker teenager who only wants to expose the big evil government plot to not tell people of the impending doom.

Luckily those rays don't go after the hackers dad who happens to be one of the a fore mentioned badge wearer of the Federal variety, and work together with the well meaning scientific geek'ete agent of the same variety to find a fix.

All they have to do is restore the magnetosphere and push start the earths spin with two satellites... peace of cake.

Enter scientist who saw the error of his ways after creating a dooms day device that will now be just the ticket to fix this sticky situation.

Good thing that the scientist even while being under arrest was able to hack into the system and have his 'device' moved from a guarded warehouse to some other location.

So the evil Federal agents are trying to get the device back and how do they do that.. well they shoot at the only people who know where it is.. and shockingly the scientist is shot and killed. Luckily he is able to tell his group of do-gooders the GPS coordinates of the 'Device' and some other cryptic mumbling...

So the big ending battle, bad feds vs good ( scientist-geek'ete/hacker-teen/agent-Dad ) for control of the device ( satellites ). Good guys want to save the world, bad guys want to save a small section so that they can create a small green zone of safety and screw the planet nearly 7 billion people.

Good thing that a non technical federal field agent could find the two wires that would make the satellite up-link work. Phew! Close one.

Save the planet, save a handful of people... decisions decisions.. Funny how all the people going after the good guys would be dead if they succeed. I guess that little point went unnoticed. Silly mindless Federal agents.

But once again the suns radiation comes to the rescue and smote those evil doers. Good ol' solar radiation. But it misses the main evil agent, dang it. So he manages to shoot the nice geek'ete and begins to smash the up-link. Silly evil agent didn't count on agent-dad kicking his butt, not to mention that the solar radiation always gets it's man. Poof, no more evil agent. The planet is saved and all is good. Miller time.

When I read this movie had a rating of better than 7, and had some Canadian production origins, I thought it was worth getting to know this movie a little better. Most of the actors were relatively unknown to me except for Bruce Davison of X-Men fame. So far so good, they were able to attract at least one person with a bit of a Sci-Fi pedigree. The movie opens with some pretty nice special effects and in spite of some early (and continuous) wooden acting by Julie Benson and Cameron Bright, I pushed on. Slowly it begins to dawn on you that this plot line is a clear rip-off of the 1983 movie Wargames where a hacker and his not quite girlfriend try to save the planet from mankind's own stupidity. Oh sure, this movie managed to mix things up a little bit from Wargames so that we are treated to a a bit of quasi-science and then, to really create a sense of tension, the studio decided to fore go the use of tripods which were so effective in making the later Bourne films so unwatchable. In the end we are left with the impression that the writers and director must have stumbled on to some national funding grant and decided ease the burden of Canadian winters by crafting this absolute tragedy. Big thumbs down on this dog with fleas.

Are you familiar with particle physics? Do you prefer movies based even loosely upon reality? This is not the movie for you.

The acting in the movie ranges from acceptable to contrived. The plot was probably conceived by someone that had a smattering of information on the way the magnetic field works in the planet earth.

The ill conceived plot incorrectly gives credit to the earth's rotation to its rotation (rather than the movement of it's massive and iron rich core's movements).

They shred, crap on, mock or otherwise insult the physical theories of Newton, Einstein, Hawking amongst others (I'm sure if you looked hard enough, you'd find violations of Planck or Schrodinger's theories).

Top off all the extravagantly described misinformation with stale acting... you get this pile. Now... to the benefit of the doubt of the actors. The acting may have been difficult with such a contrived plot. They may not have been entirely to blame.

I like SciFi movies, especially those which don't butcher the science (much).

Let me start with the idea: it kind of follows the current Hollywood doomsday trend. We got a hypothetical White Hole (the opposite of a Black Hole) which shoots chunks of ultra-high density matter into space - really good SciFi idea.

The science: You would think that an object the size of a tennis ball and the mass of a few hundred planets would have a profound gravitational effect while passing through the Solar System and through Earth for that matter. They never mention that. I mean, when you hear the words "the mass of a few hundred planets" the first thing you mind takes you is gravity. They were able to use cell phones and computers with very few problems although there were magnetic storms above them. The communications and power supply lines were almost unaffected.

The movie: First of all, they did a a pretty good job with the special effects for a low budget movie. The acting part could have been a lot better and the movie was full of cliques. The part that was the most frustrating is when they realized they just witnessed a possible global extinction event, and they chose not to inform the population as that would create panic. I mean wouldn't the fact that they got magnetic storms all over the planet and the fact that the Sun is still up in the sky at midnight, create panic by itself??!? They thought people would just ignore that?

I had the 'opportunity' to watch this movie a couple of weeks ago and I could not believe how bad it was. It was so bad that I actually took the plunge to register just to speak my piece about how bad it was. This movie makes 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' look Oscar worthy. The science in this movie is absolutely horrid and there is no logic to it at all. They spent five bucks making this movie and all of it went into the special effects budget. Nothing went into the writing of the script. Most SyFy originals movies are usually two hours of okay diversionary fare. Not this one as I could feel my brain rotting from the inside as I watched it. The topper was when the bad CIA guy was whacking away at the satellite dish at the end of the movie. Why he just didn't yank out the wires or push the bloody thing over is beyond me. I checked this movie out on the IMDb site to see what others said about it and to check its ranking. I could not believe that it had a 7.9 ranking. Maybe all that were involved with the making of the movie logged on and ranked it as that is the only way it could have gotten the ranking it has. If I could have given this movie a negative number I would have but I hope that my review will prevent more brain rottings like the one I had to endure.

As an author myself, I have a rule - I don't write about things that I don't understand because when I do, I lose credibility. When someone is writing science fiction, it is important to remain true to the known science - otherwise the actual fiction components lose credibility, which, ultimately, does a disservice to the viewer. In any work of fiction, the suspension of disbelief must not be made more difficult by suggesting things that are just plain wrong. The idea that the Earth's rotation is controlled by its magnetic fields is false. The idea that two satellites could generate enough energy to cause the Earth to begin revolving after it had stopped is absurd. And the idea that a child and a scientist who know nothing about such satellites could properly program them to facilitate such actions is ridiculous. A good story is one which at least attempts to be believable. For $1.8 Million, it should have been possible to find someone with at least a cursory knowledge of science to at least come up with a believable plot. I can only recommend this film to those who truly enjoy really bad films.

Greetings, Overall this movie is worth watching. I love disaster movies and this movie; yes does have far fetched ideas, but the end of the world is pretty far fetched. Yet there are a lot of us that think about what would happen if there were a possible complete collapse. I'm not going to add much about this movie in detail but the concept and execution of this movie made this worth my time.

I'm not saying you're going to blown away, or that this movie will become some kind of cult classic. I'm just saying that if you like disaster movies, this is worth watching because this is believable. Not as hokey as even Zombie movies.

I hope you enjoy this movie, I did.

Not much to add to other reviews. Regarding SciFi, it is clearly fiction, but the science part is worse than questionable. I watched only some 30 to 40 minutes, after "missing" the beginning, and particularly the sequence from "Death becomes her".

Still, I give this movie 2 stars because it made me laugh. Here are two approximate excerpts from the dialog, from memory :

Son: "dad, there is a report that says this is the end of the world." - Dad: "it is much worse than you think."

Agent: "The earth stopped rotating. The sun won't set". - Reply: "do not tell anyone."