Philadelphia Experiment, The

• Canada • 2012 • 89m •

• Directed by: Paul Ziller. • Starring: Nicholas Lea, Michael Paré, Ryan Robbins, Emilie Ullerup, Gina Holden, John Reardon, Malcolm McDowell, Marsha Regis, Chad Krowchuk, Allison Hossack, Tom McBeath, Dean Redman, Mark Pawson. • Music by: Michael Neilson.

In 'The Philadelphia Experiment', a secret government research project tries reviving the World War II "Philadelphia Experiment," which was an attempt to create a cloaking device to render warships invisible. When the experiment succeeds, it brings back the original ship (the Eldridge) that disappeared during the first test in 1943 - which brings death and destruction to the 21st century. It's up to the sole survivor of the first experiment and his granddaughter to stop it.

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Review:

Image from: Philadelphia Experiment, The (2012)

Usually I watch SyFy original movies just for laughs, but this actually had some interesting plot points and decent acting in some of the major roles. The basic concept is sound: a top-secret project to create an invisibility cloak, building on the supposed 1940s Philadelphia Experiment with the destroyer USS Eldridge, actually creates a link between the two events, with increasingly catastrophic results. Instead of the star-crossed lovers of the 1980s movie, we have the 1940s Eldridge survivor (played rather well by Nicholas Lea) teaming up with his own granddaughter. Kind of sweet, and makes for an interesting scene when she meets him--she recognizes him from old family photographs, and here he is, sitting in her (his?) house. And not every time travel story has the guts to end with, "Okay, we fixed the timeline, so actually none of this ever happened and no one's the wiser."

The biggest plot issue: The government baddies who keep trying to kill people who could help them solve the problem. For crying out loud, once a destroyer has landed on top of the Sears Tower, it's a little late for a cover-up. It really seemed as though the evil-government-operatives angle was more an excuse to have chase scenes and explosions than anything else. There were also some interesting plot threads that were left hanging--Who was on the telephone, warning our heroes about the baddies? What was the "Ivory Gate" thing about? If Salinger thought the whole concept was a bad idea, why did he instigate a shadow project to parallel the government's research? Maybe there was more on these originally, but it got cut from the final edit because someone thought we needed more gunfire and explosions.

Not a great movie, but so much better than most of their original movies!

Review by haimericus from the Internet Movie Database.