So today I’m going to take a break from comics and this time do a little movie review. Today I’m going to talk about the Syfy movie ‘Stonehenge Apocalypse.’ Now I don’t normally like too many of the Syfy made for TV movies, usually it’s a mixture of bad plot, bad acting, bad special effects – but I’ve wanted to watch this movie for some time now. Part of the reason is the casting, you’ve got Torri Higginson from Stargate: Atlantis, and Misha Collins from Supernatural playing fairly large sized roles. Of course there’s Hill Harper (from CSI: NY) too; I’m not a fan of his character on CSI: NY but I’m willing to give the movie a shot.
The special effects are what you’ve come to expect from Syfy movies, but maybe because it’s Christmas time and I’m used to watching Doctor Who around this time of year the opening sequence with Stonehenge rotating and the giant electrical blots vaporizing people remind me a lot of Doctor Who. Like I said it could be timing, or the fact that I’m all geared up to watch the latest Christmas Special – who knows. I’m not a fan of the musical score for certain scenes, it’s louder than the dialogue and honestly the fact that it’s the same piece that plays for like three minutes straight is kind of annoying.
I don’t know if anyone else who watches this movie will have as difficult of a time with this as I did but I found it really hard to move past Misha’s voice. I’m so used to it being gravely on Supernatural that it sounds weird hearing him speak any way differently. On a similar note I ran into the same problem with Torri and her character’s accent as well. I know it’s really superficial but I’m only like ten minutes into the movie now. Speaking of superficial for some reason Stonehenge to me just seems to always look a bit off, but I actually prefer it looking off over the fact that the camera tends to jump around a lot. I know that was done for budget reasons, I mean this movie is about the end of the world, they need to save up the money to use on those standard oh so cheesy sub-par special effects. I can move past the shaky camera work during the action scenes, but when they’re just standing around talking (like after the volcanic eruption in Mexico) I don’t need to see the camera shake as much as it did. Between that and the music this movie is kind of giving me a headache.
For a Syfy movie this was particularly good. I like that they sort of kept away from showing the natural disasters that were happening around the globe as a result of the events in the movie – it let you leave things up to your imagination instead of relying on overusing special effects. I do think that the movie could have been better if they threw in more humor, the only really funny line in the movie just so happened to be the best line as well: “I never said it was aliens on the moon… it was a robot head.” The acting also was better for Syfy movies and that has to be attributed to Torri and Misha who have had to pull off some strange scenes in their own respective shows. I’d have to say the weakest of the main cast had to have been Hill – I don’t think this was the right genre for him.
Overall the movie is pretty good; it is entertaining and doesn’t seem to drag on longer than it needs to. You know what I’m talking about sometimes you can watch something for ten minutes and feel like four hours have passed and there are things that you can watch ten times in a row and not be sick of it at all – Stonehenge Apocalypse falls somewhere in the middle and for a Syfy made for TV then released to DVD movie that’s pretty damn good. Rating: B-
