Firequake (2014)

That was an excellent one.

Overrated

Awesome Movie

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

FIREQUAKE is a typical SyFy Channel B-movie about a government experiment leading to worldwide natural disaster when earthquakes begin spewing lava around the word. Only Alexandra Paul can save the day by running around, narrowly outrunning the disasters, and fighting back against the authorities. This is business as usual for a cheesy, low budget disaster film, made without a scrap of originality but plenty of cheese in the form of bad CGI and worse acting. There's little to get excited about, even for fans of this particular genre.

If I would want to be really tolerant, I could. I could forget about the terribly written and absolutely predictable plot. I could forget the countless number of mistakes according to Czech Republic, European culture and language barriers...I mean how could not a single person in the movie speak Czech? How could Czech cops have cars with the signs spelling 'Police' instead of 'Policie' as it should? I could forget the low cost effects and the budget-friendly repeated use of scenes. I could forget the necessity of US army to come and heroically save the day and I could even forget the shots of definitely non-Czech looking post-apocalyptic ruins. I could forget the awkward and irrelevant happy ending set it what looks like an Italian suburbs. But the ONE thing I can't forget is, that the "superhero mom" who is a leading scientist wants to treat her daughter's low blood sugar with insulin. This movie is a joke.

Such a shame that a decent, if far-fetched, idea was wasted by truly dreadful execution. SyFy have made some tolerable movies, a lot of bad ones and an even larger amount of trash. Firequake is in the trash category and one of their worst in a long time.Firequake is a very cheap-looking movie, everything looks very drab and the camera work and editing looks as if composed in a hurry. The special effects fare even worse, yes it is low budget but is that a good enough excuse for a lack of effort and the effects looking so fake and like they belong somewhere else? Not to me. The music is incredibly generic and sometimes like a monotonous drone, nothing interesting or memorable here.Even by SyFy standards, the script is very stilted and cliché-ridden, with forced attempts at humour, lots of gibberish passing for sci-fi and logic, plodding and often irrelevant exposition and painfully ham-fisted melodrama. The story is dull and manages to be both ridiculous and over-serious. The idea is decent but it all feels half-baked and without any tension or sense. The characters are cardboard and even more clichéd than the writing, some managing to be annoying(especially the main teenage character), while the direction is flat and the acting is a mess of overwrought and completely disengaged.Overall, had potential but a disaster all round. 1/10 Bethany Cox

There's something to be said for sitting back and enjoying a B movie once in awhile. If you aren't already into B movies, then don't bother, because this is definitely in that category.A SyFy style movie, only lower budget. It has every. single. -CLICHE- in the book - the snotty, angst-riddled teenage daughter, the smart, dorky super-brainy scientist mom who doesn't have a clue how to be a good parent, the evil manipulative scheming b***ard who makes trouble and then blames it all on the protagonist, the ex-hippies, the love-interest in peril - everything.I was enjoying it as much as I usually do until about 50 minutes in, when the main teenage character began experiencing a diabetic crisis. Her blood sugar was going low. So naturally, her mother began frantically doing everything in her power to find some insulin for the girl. Sugary drinks wouldn't do it, "...she must have insulin, NOW!" :-|That basically ruined any semblance of enjoyment I -had- been getting from the movie. My tolerance for scientific illiteracy is pretty high when it comes to these types of movies, but -this-? I was so, so, so, so, SOOOOOOooo disappointed. I mean, the scientific stuff was already garbage (which I didn't mind, as it's par for the course), but you'd thought they could have at least gotten that one very, very simple, excruciatingly well-known fact right - that if your blood sugar's going low, the LAST thing you want to get for it is insulin. Unless perhaps the mother was secretly trying to murder her own daughter amidst the crisis? Now -that- could've made for an interesting plot device. ;-) But alas, that wasn't their intent.Am I really all that much more brainy than the average actor, script-writer and studio exec that I possess the esoteric knowledge of how diabetes works? :-?Other than that, like I said, it's typical SyFy-esque B-movie fair. If ignorance about diabetes doesn't bother you, and you usually like B-movies, you might enjoy this. Otherwise, if you don't like clichés or cheese, avoid it like the plague.