Stormageddon

USA • 2015 • 90m •

• Directed by: Nick Lyon. • Starring: John Hennigan, Eve Mauro, Joseph Gatt, Robert Blanche, Ricco Ross, David Shatraw, Adrian Paul, David Preston, Jon Mack, Robert Craighead, Jeff Kaake, John Ierardi, Mercy Malick. • Music by: Chris Ridenhour.

What happens when you ask the most powerful computer program, run by the most powerful computers, to follow, listen and predict human behavior? The program learns, becomes sentient and begins to behave like a human. When a master computer program, Echelon, takes over America's entire online system, our country is threatened to be brought to its knees. Hacking into DARPA, Echelon gains the ability to manipulate the weather, create earthquakes, and cause a level of destruction unlike anything the country could ever imagine. But how do you stop a computer program when it has control over any and every defense you have?

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Trailer #1

1:17

Trailer #2

0:41

Review:

I quite liked the premise of this film - but that's because it's basically The Terminator with a storm thrown in for good measure. The US has created an artificial intelligence called Echelon which becomes self-aware and turns on its creators. Our only hope is in a clinically inept woman and her robot buddy who are following a series of cryptic clues to stopping Echelon left to her in a VHS tape by her dead father, one of the creators of Echelon. Our bungling heroes are doggedly pursued by evil Echelon robots and psychotic government agents, neither of which are fully explained due to formulaic, lacklustre writing. The murder of the girl's father, Echelon's ability to manipulate the weather, the sudden appearance of the VHS tape at just the right moment and the father's use of cryptic clues to lead his daughter to the 'kill switch' instead of just telling her straight up on the tape could also have used some explanation.

Despite a relatively promising story, the film is let down by a terrible cast of Z-list TV actors and a director with a background in mannequin restoration. Sometimes it's possible to salvage a bad film with good editing, but the editor here had very little to work with and with this being his first film was completely out of his depth.

The CGI is also terrible. I've come to expect bad CGI in low budget films from 10 years ago, but this film is less than two years old. It seems anyone with even a little experience in Cinema 4D and After Effects thinks they can start their own visual effects company and make feature length films. If only it was as easy as that.

This is a prime example of a low budget film where no-one in the production was prepared to give 100% or even lift a finger if they weren't paid extra for it. Everything about this film is cheap and formulaic. If you've seen one SyFy film, you've seen them all and there's certainly nothing about this one that makes it stand out from any of the others.

Review by home-96 from the Internet Movie Database.

Off-Site Reviews:

Apr 25 2017, 20:58

Stormageddon: Earthquake vs. Tsunami (2013) - DVD review.

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