Friday, June 25, 2010

Welcome To The Apocalypse (An Asylum Disaster)

A couple of weeks back, I revealed to all that I'm Aussie with not much knowledge of ''Ozploitation'' genre and it's also clear that the first Mad Max film is also classified as ''Carsploitation'' which surprisingly, I have little knowledge but seen several movies like The Italian Job, The Blues Brothers and god help me... Fast And The Furious and twenty-something sequels (I just found out there's an new one called ''Fast Five'' which has Dwayne Johnson involved... so following The Tooth Fairy, he went to a shitty franchise).

And Why did Arnie ''pass the torch'' to this guy on ''The Rundown''???

I try to think what Exploitation sub-genre that I'm more familiar with at the moment (and not to worry, I will have a look at those Mondo Cane and Blaxploitation in the not-too-distant-future) and so far, here's an couple – Carsploitation (I almost forgot about Death Proof and Death Race 2000), Remakesploitation, Slasher Films (or in my case, Slashploitation), Spaghetti Westerns, Stoner Films (or Stoneploitation) and Vigilante Films. Another one that I seem to fit in is the worst take on Exploitation sub-genre known as ''Eschploitation''.

''Hi, I'm Nicholae Carpathia and I approve this review.''

You see, Eschploitation involves according to wikipedia ''apocalyptic Christian end-times thrillers'' and you know that sounds both good and bad at the same time. Some are familiar with Apocalypse and Left Behind movies that involves the anti-christ posing as the messiah, an tribulation force and christian music that doesn't sound like Nickelback and Creed doing a duet (gee, that sounds like the worst mashup idea ever). Heck, some people say Neon Genesis Evangelion and Pulse (the American remake series) falls into the genre. However, I think of NGE as the best anime series ever and Pulse... I'm not sure that one is also eschploitation so am I missing something (I was talking about the remake by the way).

I like to imagine this show being talked about at any church (or in satanist religion's case, an hentai retelling instead).


Now on to the movie and it's the first Asylum movie I gonna review called ''The Apocalypse'' (no confusion to the Apocalypse film series) and it's the worst, horrible take on the eschploitation genre ever filmed. I think of this Asylum trash as eschploitation because it involves the Rapture, the Church but no Antichrist or Tribulation Force. Along with few (okay, several) other movies made by Asylum Films (and some associated with Faith Films like this movie), it should be on the bargain bin (or an average bin) because... man, it's the worst 95 minutes that I have ever seen (make that two times the limit because I just saw it again). I will tell you what the fuck this movie is about and why you should avoid yet-another Asylum movie at all cost...

So the rangers are just standing there looking at how this college party ended in fire? Pretty Weak.

This movie involves an married couple (that's sort-of separated but who cares?) known as Jason and Ashley (played by Rhett Giles and Jill Stapley, best known for some other movie) whom after witnessing an meteor shower and a mini-rapture (in the beginning, only Jason's police partner and his dog disappeared) who decide to travel to somewhere in Los Angeles to get to their daughter but guess what? There's Earthquakes, raining, more disappearances and whatever I forgot happening.

The Apocalypse: A Love Starring... Starring John Barrowman Jr & Blake Not-So-Lively.

Nearing on their daughter's whereabouts, Jason and Ashley question their religious views since it's the perfect way to find the daughter (meaning fuck-off to GPS system) before they end up to the same church their daughter Lindsay and strangely enough, more of the disappearances with only Jason only to get to Lindsay seconds before the big one hits the earth. Yeah, the movie ends with Earth being bombarded by a meteorite.

Huh? The shark still looks fake from here.


So just to recap the movie that is ''The Apocalypse'', it's about an couple-in-crisis who must go to see their daughter while the actual doomsday is happening and that sums up the synopsis of the movie. Okay, there is few minor parts of the movie that I get to enjoy and here's how I think of it...

1) Rhett Giles does the best Tom Cruise lookalike I ever seen (I wish I have the picture of that as proof but let's say it looks kinda like this).

2) The first death in this movie involves an college student getting hit by a mini-meteorite (It's so funny that it almost became an Meteor Man remake instead).

3) Guess what that movie's Priest looked like? I also don't have a picture from that but well, this is a serious lookalike description.

04) The pointless shots of an giant meteorite heading towards earth (and also getting away from it in a few scenes).

And that's about it. This movie indeed falls to the line of eschploitation because it's associated with Faith Films (along with four other Asylum films) and it partially involves the topic of religion. At least on the plus side, it doesn't have dodgy christian music or an tribulation force which has Kirk Cameron in it. Okay, I may not have anything against Christianity and since I'm an Catholic, we have our beliefs of the Almighty himself. It's just that ''The Apocalypse'' is the boring take on the genre and I can tell you that because I seen Left Behind and the first two ''Apocalypse'' movies and at least, they can be enjoyable (well, maybe not the first ''Apocalypse'' movie but that's another story).

If you ignore my review and just look at the screencaps, here's an spoiler alert for this movie I'm talking about!


At least, for once I take on an movie that isn't good for the first time and there will be more. So this is not just an bad movie, it's an boring, waste-of-time movie and if you're into that, go ahead. But be warned because its screenplay is written by David Michael Latt (aka the biggest producer of Asylum Films) and at the time of writing, it's #27 on the IMDb Bottom 100 list (believe it or not but including this one, I seen 49 of those on the list and several of them are good MST3K episodes) and with that list, it's the worst Asylum movie ever made... well, for now.

Good News: Asylum is making Titanic 2. Bad News: It doesn't involve an zombie Leo so... Fuck.


Oh, and here's an Cracked website review of Left Behind linked here at http://www.cracked.com/funny-638-left-behind/ (it's funnier than what I wrote here).

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