The movie's palette is typically cold and colorless, making the rare colors that do appear in the film really stand out. This is the first thing you'll notice in the movie since it opens with a man in a deep red Santa Clause outfit riding a snowmobile up the face of snow-packed mountain. The picture quality isn't bad, but it sure isn't demo-worthy either.Īs you would hope from a movie mostly taking place in snow-white environments, the colors in 'Ice Quake' explode with vibrancy. 'Ice Quake' lands on Blu-ray with a run-of-the-mill 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 encode presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Like most other Anchor Bay Blu-rays, the 'Ice Quake' pre-menu parade features an FBI warning, an Anchor Bay vanity reel, a commentary disclaimer and a trailer for an equally absurd-looking Syfy movie called 'Metal Shifters.' Here's to hoping I don't end up reviewing that title as well! If the title of the movie itself hasn't scared you away already, the cheesy cover art will. Avoid this Blu-ray at all costs.Īnchor Bay has placed 'Ice Quake' on a Region A BD-25 in an eco-friendly blue keepcase that will slow down the momentum of global warming and the eventuality of ice geysers. The chopper crash and explosions effects on the original 'Modern Warfare' video game are far superior to those in 'Ice Quake.' With at least one shot clearly exposing the camera in a reflection, this movie is one visible boom mic away from being a feature-length YouTube video. How people can actually sit through this garbage is even more unclear to me. How they landed Victor Garber, the designer of the Titanic in 'Titanic,' as a co-star is beyond me. "If we don't find a way to stop "more than 100 giga-tons of methane gas" (they repeatedly use this phrase "100 giga-tons" so many times that it would make for an alcohol-poisoning drinking game) from flowing into open air, it will poison the entire planet and kill off all lifeforms!" Yet this exact same disaster just happened in Russia no more than 24 hours ago and the planet seems to be doing just fine. The funniest plot hole in 'Ice Quake' is how severe they make this disaster out to be. Our hero must save his family and stop mother nature in order to save Christmas. While illegally searching for a tree to cut down on government property, the mountainside opens up and separates the kids from their parents. Yet another lame reflection of the low budget and the filmmakers not caring to set their movie in reality). (It's obvious that 'Ice Quake' was not filmed during winter because there's no snow in Fairbanks. The entire Christmas plot is nothing more than a gimmick to get our hero and his family in the mountains. Not having come in contact with air yet, the methane gas has remaining in a liquid form below the earth's surface – but now the pressure has built up so much that it's causing the ground to open up in huge crevices and spew out sub-zero gas and frozen water in "ice geysers."īeing Christmas Eve, our hero has the day off and takes his family into the mountains to look for a pine tree worthy of chopping down, mounting in their living room and decorating. As permafrost has been melting, methane gas has been released in high amounts. Now, the same precursor events are happening in Alaska – only this time there are scientists nearby collecting the data and piecing together exactly what is going on.Īs it turns out, global warming is a cyclical event that has been propelled by human activity. One day earlier, seismic activity was reported in Russia prior to the collapsing of an entire ice shelf. On Christmas Eve, a military scientist in Fairbanks, Alaska takes notice of odd sub-surface activity occurring in the northern hemisphere. 'Ice Quake' tries to pass itself off as a Christmas movie. The only thing more absurd than what they try passing off in their movies is the fact that enough people actually watch and purchase these made-for-television.things to keep Syfy churning them out. 'Ice Quake' (and basically ever other Syfy original movie) expects you to just go with this nonsensical reality. Since it would cost too much to shoot in caves or build realistic ones on a soundstage, they simply write it into the script that all he has to do is detonate a small bomb at ground level and the tiny blast will be enough to destroy the glacial caves well below the surface. For example, in 'Ice Quake,' our hero must stop an underground river from flowing down a certain cave. My biggest beef isn't with the atrocious screenplay, bland and/or scenery-chomping actors, low-budget special effects, or sheer ridiculousness – no, what bothers me the most is the dumb stuff that they try getting away with. The one benefit to come from a cataclysmic end-of-the-world disaster like the one threatening the characters in 'Ice Quake' would be the extinction of Syfy Channel original movies.
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