Eve of Destruction does have its redeeming values, and it is definitely better than Ring of Fire that had nothing to recommend it apart from Terry O'Quinn. The setting in Eve of Destruction has a good austere atmosphere, and while not mind-blowing the photography is hardly what you call amateurish. The acting from the four leads is also better than average, Steven Weber is good as the father figure, Christine Cox does sympathetic believably, Treat Williams makes for a great slime-ball and Aleks Paunovic has a moody and sullen sort of character and he pulls it off nicely. The special effects do stick out like a sore thumb though, while the rest of the production values saw some decent effort put into it the special effects look like a rushed last-minute job. The music is not very memorable, has a tendency to plod and it is unimaginative. It wouldn't have mattered if the characters were clichés, what matters more is making them interesting and despite the commendable lead acting the characters are not developed enough. The secondary roles weren't as involving as the lead roles, they generally lacked personality and were bland as a result. The script is repetitive and resorts too much in random and overwrought melodrama, while the story has a decent concept that is executed with a lack of thrills and tension generally that gets increasingly dull, illogical and cheesy in the second half(Eve of Destruction is a little better paced than Ring of Fire this said, and is not as exposition-heavy). Overall, was lacking and is not that great but could have been much worse. 4/10 Bethany Cox
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nowego15 April 2013After sitting though this hoping it was going to improve or grab me in some way it is easy to see why the rating for this is so low.
Very average disaster fare IMO.
Nothing special to make you want to sit through 180 minutes of average special effects and average acting. I did it to be able to write this review.
The "been there done that" memories were raging all the way through this, lots of standard good guy bad guy cliques.
Bad guy greedy company owner tries to go against all the recommendations that they shouldn't to do what they want to do, small environmental protest group interferes and disaster ensures.
Bad guys escape justice at last minute, good guys overt complete catastrophe and life gets back on track. Only 500,000 people we never see have died.
The End. -
But you have to love them.
Sometimes you get movies that are well-written and challenging (e.g., "Primer"), but with budget effects and sets. Then you get "Eve of Destruction," which is exactly the opposite. Relying on 1960s "Star Trek" physics, this movie actually spent some time on locating or creating the sets, and the effects are not nearly as bad as some other reviewers would have you believe. And it is the ONLY movie I can recall where you get to see someone drill through a telephone pole. (It's always been simulated drilling in other films.)
My favorite scene is when the two Nobel-laureate physicists decide the answer is to create a "denser vacuum." I'm pretty sure that they mean a vacuum with LESS average density or mass, since there's no vacuum existing at that time, but we get by that fairly quickly. And they never seem to question why using their apparatus to do something over HERE, makes bad things happen about two miles over THERE.
My second favorite scene is when an eco-terrorist "occupy" movement is broken up by riot police. As far as I could see, there were exactly two riot police (though both of them were costumed very nicely).
If I had a son and wanted to encourage him to go into physics, I would show him this film. It would go something like this:
"See! All the women you meet will have really nice breasts and great cleavage."
"But, Dad, they're all either evil or misguided!"
"Yes, which is why we need more male physicists."
Check it out! -
ThomasJeff30 August 2013I love Christina Cox, her performances are always amazing and she's clearly the star of this show. However, the plot is nonsensical and irrational. The scenes are nice and special effects are not bad.
But the biggest problem with this series is the PLOT and MESSAGE being sent to people that is completely the wrong message to send to people. Your typical UNORIGINAL Frankenstein message "Stop playing God, scientists!" This is by far the dumbest, anti-intellectual message movies/films have spread throughout the decades.
Without spoiling anything... Scientists discover a source of energy but certain things happen that cause disasters and it simply logically doesn't follow why they would happen in other random areas. It also doesn't make sense that they can't just pull the plug. It further doesn't make sense why an evil CEO would risk jail time and possible catastrophic results just to not have a "bad quarterly review." A lot of plot holes are included in the movie, such as the Russian-sub-plot as to how something could be kept under wraps.
Essentially the conclusion the filmmakers want you to draw is: Science is crazy, magical, and accidents "might" happen. Which is simply the antithesis of what science is about and accidents such as this never happen on this scale in scientific experiments by scientists. There's a reason they do pre-tests to pre-tests to tests, and in this film, they act like even those pre-tests can go wrong.
The worst "energy-related disaster" in our REAL world, such as chernobyl, was because of engineers who didn't know what they were doing. It was because of lack of safety protocols, lack of computer automated systems, and outdated equipment that was UNDERFUNDED. That is the lesson to learn from Chernobyl, when you don't invest in a technology for increasing its safety standards.
So if anyone thinks that they should draw the lesson of: "We shouldn't fund such experiments, we don't fully understand!" -- That is the incorrect lesson. The mere act of not-funding-something, is the lesson to be drawn from real life events like Chernobyl, because machines and systems get too old; protocols become outdated; and these technologies never improve and become safer.
As for the "Don't play God" nonsense, why would God give humans the ability to do these things if he didn't want you to discover them? Or why would he allow millions of people to die, in such a "failed experiment" just to teach a simple lesson about that? It makes no sense logically or philosophically, and filmmakers should stop trying to create conclusions for their audience that they probably never even asked a philosopher about. -
canuckteach23 August 2013This presentation was a mess from beginning to end (thank goodness I had the PVR to fast-forward the commercials). Parts and characters are not re-connected, suspense is supposed to come from the fact the none of the characters (parents or teens) can communicate properly, and the action frequently grinds to a halt to allow people to express their otherwise suppressed feelings for one another. Along with all this, the plot line as expressed in the guides (and at IMDb) is INCORRECT. It is stated 'when two scientists attempt to discover unlimited energy, their experiment is hijacked and sabotaged by eco-terrorists. The result is a dark energy black hole that could destroy the planet. ..' ** Spoiler ** The experiment is NOT hijacked by Eco-terrorists - their role in the experiment mishap is very limited, but they do fashion some minor sabotage at a power sub-station. The threat to the planet is caused by some very stupid scientists, and some extremely lax supervision by the local authorities, when an energy firm starts tampering with some powerful forces that have already gone wrong elsewhere.
No sustained action, crummy dialogue, inexplicable ineptness and decision-making by supposedly smart people make this 2-parter a prime candidate for a pass. Try any Brit suspense series instead for none of the above. -
Steve-Carroll-121 January 2022It's not the best acting, nor story lines but it's an ok sofa lazing Sunday afternoon show, it doesn't take much to follow & allows you to type up reviews and watch.
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eric-81-35752015 August 2014and I gave this a 5.... I still watched it through to the end. Chalk it up to sentimentalism, but I really enjoyed some of the writing - the dialog was cheesy as hell sometimes ("We *all* have some explaining to do") but there were honest moments and I actually got surprised a couple times by the success of the attempts to make the characters more relatable and believable.
Treat Williams was a fantastic choice of casting. I could sympathize just enough with the character Max and his menacing side was brilliant.
Most of the other characters were mostly flat and staid, but as I mentioned, there were these glimmers of honest dialog that kept me happy.
All in all, most of the cast was damn good - far better than I expected for a 2 episode miniseries that Netflix basically introduced as "eco-maniacs ruin earth for the rest of us."
Heck, it was good enough that I opened an account on here finally just to comment on it!
Watch it if you have any appreciation for crappy sci-fi or good attempts at making films. I am now off to rate Stargate SG1... 30 stars for every episode! -
menesis28 September 2014Particle accelerator, opposing beams of protons, power, vacuum, magnets, cooling... that's all the details about the experiment. Not even a black hole is mentioned in the movie. I'm not an expert of physics, but even for me there was way too little explanation what is going on. Aura? The only explanation of the glow above the facility is "aura" and lightning? Come on... Why electric sockets are set on fire? What happens to Denver whose high-rise buildings looks to be sucked in by a force field? Why that happens on the other side of the globe at Paris and London? We don't even see any destruction done except one district set on fire. I expected the movie to be more scientific than this. Instead, it focused on the main scientist's daughter and electrician's wife. There is not even a dedicated power plant for the accelerator, only a transformer station. All in all, the message of the movie seems to be that there are obsessed scientists paid buy evil corporations, and an opposing environmentalist group that is trying to stop the evil experiment. The bad, bad corporation also is growing gmo crops made from cancer metastasis cells just to make the company even more evil, even though the gmo thing does not influence the scenario in any way. So instead of science fiction we get a caricature of careless scientists on a leash controlled by evil corporation who together are ready to destroy a city for profit. And an Occupy movement that are "fighting" to save "our universe". This certainly prefers fear over science, and there is enough of this madness already. A cheap way to fuel the amateur anti-whatever opposition.
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Snootz22 July 2019This isn't a perfect film, it's not high-budget, it's an end-of-the-world disaster flick. Anyone going in expecting anything more is severely delusional. There are some flaws, a few corny lines, and the ending is slightly lame (but not totally). There have been FAR worse disaster films. It is definitely not a 1-star film as some would have people believe.
The directing and acting in this was above par. The story line was very cliche, very predictable, nothing unusual. It does however have some decent special effects. I particularly liked the acting of Aleks Paunovic, the Russian electric lineman. In truth most of the actors do a fairly decent job. The film starts out interesting and maintains its momentum through both episodes. I suspect it is better to binge-watch it online rather than lose that momentum in a 2-night micro-series.
Several reviews here are extraordinarily harsh. One has to wonder what they were expecting going in. You don't go see a Transformers movie and complain that it's about giant robots, nor go to a hamburger joint and complain they don't have gourmet food. This is obviously a low-budget, made-for-TV disaster flick, and people are knocking it for being a low budget disaster flick? Get real.
This is considerably better than most films of this type. I found it interesting all the way through. No, it's not hard science (does anyone here even KNOW hard science when it comes to dark matter?). There's a lot of supposition, conjecture and imagination going on. It's not intended to be cerebral fiction.
Overall an entertaining film, which is all one should expect it to be. Not the best film ever made, but by no means one of the worst as some "reviewers" here would have us believe. If you have three hours to kill, it's worth a view. People giving this movie an unbalanced 1-star review are doing no one any favors. If you don't like B class movies, don't watch B class movies. Duh. -
chadhulhu-249-9630962 June 2015My eyes! the goggles do nothing! Just watched this on Netflix, well finished it. I wonder why, because normally I love destruction-porn, but this was just bad. With the actors, I have to say I have enjoyed them in the past, but this is just horrid. I am tired of these end of the world BS movies, which we sudden fix in the last 5 minutes, and move on. No, depth, no character building. I felt I caught something 3 episodes after the character defining arc. The daughter was predictable, actually all of them were predictable. Avoid this turd like the plague. It might be Syfy, if not good god, someone stop crap like this.
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cbmuzik300022 August 2013This movie was actually a lot better than I imagined it would be. I am extremely critical of films, but for some odd reason, this one had a bit of this, a bit of that, and just enough something to make me watch watch it all the way through.
This was no better than a good B movie and far better than some network television shows people think are so awesome. Some actors were good, others need to go back to acting school...but Steve Weber anchored this movie just enough to make it watchable. Treat Williams also made it OK to watch as well. I was actually looking for it to be a bit longer.
The storyline could have been developed a bit more, but other than that, sci-fi buffs can sit through this one.
This movie has the making of a much longer mini-series, imo. Come on, who doesn't want to see Ms Cox run around om film? -
suite9225 September 2013Episode 1 (87 minutes)
From Netflix: "Scientists drill a hole in the universe to harvest a limitless pool of 'dark energy', but the experiment goes horribly wrong and wipes an entire city off the map. Now, the effort to save the world, becomes the ultimate threat that could destroy it."
What could possibly go wrong here? Who sanctioned such an effort?
Modelling assertion: Dark energy is 75% of the universe. The intention is to tap this.
Billionaire Max Salinger has a big plans--feed the world with engineered plants; supply the world's energy needs with dark energy. His Proteus Group has eco-activist opposition, P53. They start with the plants, then move on to the dark energy effort.
Sub-plot: Karl and his daughter Ruby's ongoing dysfunctional relationship; his not resolving the death of his wife ten years previous.
Sub-plot: propagandizing by the activist group P53. Ruby gets sucked into this.
Sub-plot: Ruslan was in Russia (living in Lhitiska) as a lineman. He witnesses his town being destroyed by lightning. He moves to America, around Denver, and gets another job as a lineman. His second marriage is not going well.
Sub-plot: Max is sleeping with Chloe, and Max's man on scene orders her to keep mum, even from Karl and Rachel. So the tech leads are kept in the dark about hardware problems.
The first full-on tests have problems. There's a breach in the accelerator's coolant system, and Ruslan witnesses phenomena much as he did at Lhitiska.
There was a fatality from this, and the cover-up started. Max entreats Chloe to stay silent about the accident. David tries to comfort and silence the relatives of the dead man. Ruslan finds Karl and tells him about Lhitiska. Karl tries to confirm or deny Ruslan's story with an old friend, Ilya. So much lying, so little time.
Ruby joins with P53, and provides access to the Proteus project. Sabotage ensues. She provides passwords. She provides a security pass to get onto the Proteus campus. She betrays everyone, in other words, and the huge damage that follows is her fault.
After the security breach, another proving test is started, and the effects are immediate. The neighborhood Ruslan's American family lives ignites. The full test is yet to come.
Episode 2 (87 minutes)
Karl and Rachel argue about going forward. P53 plans further depredations. Max wants to go forward no matter what. Ruslan's friends deal with their house burning down, the wife's mom dying, and their son needing an operation.
Max uses Chloe and David to cut Rachel out of the loop, and do the experiment anyway.
Disaster results: everything that could go wrong does go wrong. The dark energy source is found, and keeps coming to us, even when power is shutoff.
Will the surviving personnel have any chance of closing the hole in the universe?
Scores----
Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.
Sound: 7/10 Some of the worst incidental music ever in the introductory credits. The spoken word is well done.
Special Effects: 7/10 The visuals are good, but the incidental sound is goofy.
Acting: 5/10 Steven Weber, Christina Cox, Treat Williams, and Aleks Paunovic are good enough, given what the screenplay had them say. Jessica McLeod, Colin Lawrence, Leah Gibson, and the P53 actors I could have done without.
Screenplay: 6/10 Beginning, middle, end. Not so bad there. The P53 crew were not believable, which made the motivational parts hard to accept. Also, the amount of material here could have been compressed into two hours. -
alistairc_200019 July 2014Well I caught this drivel on Netflix. What was good about it had a good idea. Though it was done in slow motion mode. The plot is ludicrous. Eco terrorist do not want big business to succeed with their aim of giving the world free power without the use of fossil fuels. This is eco terrorists we are talking about. You would think they would be queueing up to help them get the project off the ground.
So these naughty do something at a pivotal moment and mayhem erupts. A lot of the ideas behind this come from the reboot of the British TV series Doomwatch.
If they had made it an hour and a half dropped some of the clichéd dialogue this might have been quite good fun. In the end it was a case of I have seen this done before better. -
Gin-ster1 September 2013I see a lot of criticism here of the irrationality of the plot and its anti-science tone. I agree that the plot was irrational, and also, that the scientists didn't behave like real ones. Yet I don't mind the nonsensical nature of the threat - after all, isn't that always the case when disaster on a global scale is the threat? (i.e. mega-volcanoes, shift in earth's magnetic field, alien invasions, zombies, etc.?)It's always necessary to suspend disbelief or it's impossible to watch anything of this genre. As to showing scientists negatively, I didn't get that sense as much as showing an attack on the real villain here, "corporate greed." The driving force behind all the "wrong-headedness" was the corporate head of the project, played with scenery-chewing glee by Treat Williams. If I have any complaints about its political correctness, I'd say it also threw a barb at "occupy Wall Street" and Greenpeace, and the symbol of greed (i.e. Williams' role) had a Jewish name, which was admittedly something I had to keep overlooking.
Why my relatively high rating? First, the surprisingly affecting back-story of the Russian lineman, along with good unusually good acting for this level of movie, by the Russian character, his wife, the lead scientist and the main protagonist, played by Steven Weber. His eye-rolling teen daughter was fairly well played too, given the clichéd nature of this role (you could interchange her with the daughter in "Under the Dome.") Also, and here is the real spoiler: did the world come to an end? Well, not entirely, but the lack of clarity on that was in itself unique (we only know that Denver, Paris, London and the Pyramids took direct hits) - so the lack of "finality" is unusual for this type of film. And on a related note, from the first 10 minutes I had been expecting the real villain, the corporate CEO played by Treat Williams, and the scientist who prostituted herself to him, to be zapped into smithereens by "dark energy," by the end of the film, as a sort of divine justice for their blindly going ahead with the project they knew to be destructive. So ... SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER big surprise, NOTHING happens to them. This is the long way of saying that despite a lot of apparent clichés, in the end, this was not your typical "B" sci fi movie - it was not all that predictable - and that is what accounts for my relatively higher ratings, along with surprisingly nuanced performances by some case members (i.e. Steven Weber) amidst some stock-villain types. -
xenogenex24 August 2013Look, there are lots of technical reasons to cringe at this. Especially if you are a trained film, script, or score editor.
There are points where the storyline borrows almost completely from other SyFy series. There are may points that are completely derivative of movies from the last 20 years. Some of the film- workers are obviously not Russian or "terrorist" types.
Music sometimes sounds stock, and at times overwhelms the dialog to the point of being ridiculous.
Yes, it is really bad most of the time. But you don't have to pay to watch this other than your time and it has some entertainment value.
Just watch the show if you like SyFy productions and decide for yourself. It is at least worlds beyond Sharknado.