SyFy’s Take on Earth’s Final Hours: A Movie Review

Director: David Hogan.

Writers: David Ray, Robert Ozn, and Rachelle S. Howie.

Cast: Hamza Adam, Julia Benson and Cameron Bright.

When producers start running out of ideas for the next disaster flick because every single earth-borne extinction scenario has been done, the next logical step is to look into outer space for new ideas. To save mankind, asteroids and comets have to be blown up and solar flares have to be deflected. But there is more out there that can be dreamt of in scientific philosophy. A gamma ray burst or a star going nova has not been done yet.

Or when the next cosmic weapon happens to be a fragment of a neutron star, even the smallest amount can shred away magnetic poles before it reaches the planet Earth. Its own mass and magnetic attraction is a billion times that of the planet Jupiter.

Anyone who has watched History Channel’s “The Universe” in the past few years will have learned about the many ways the Planet Earth can be destroyed.

But in the movie, Earth’s Final Hours, all it took was a small piece of dense matter punching straight through the planet faster than anyone could blink. Technically, the devastation should have been instantaneous, but for the sake of being able to make a movie, the excitement over how mankind can save itself from total destruction is an interesting watch. This movie is more about the action of saving a planet that can no longer spin along its axis, and less about the father-son conflict that tries to resolve itself at the same time.

When Federal Agents Massey (Alex Zahara) and John Streich (Robert Knepper) go to investigate why a mysterious scientist is setting up monitoring equipment in a field, they will get more than just a chance encounter with a shower of rocks from outer space. Of course, in one of those rare instances of being killed by a meteorite, the only individual that knows the fate of the planet is not flatter than a pancake, but instead has a hole punched through his chest. In a cheesy funny way—and not surprisingly—he is not the only one who can save the world. There are a few who can, like a very attractive scientist, Chloe Edwards (Julia Benson). But to do so involves restarting a secret government project that can regenerate Earth's magnetic poles, figuring out what to do, and getting a boy – the son of Streich’s, Andy (Cameron Bright) – to do the job.

Despite some very far-fetched science being offered in this movie and a few clichés to drive the story along, at least the next big idea of how to destroy the planet is original. Until modern satellites can recognize the fact the planet Earth is in the path of a dense piece of matter or a radiation cloud, there may be very little the people of this planet can do to stop utter devastation from happening.

That also includes technologies to either shove the planet out of the way or to regenerate the magnetic fields that protects the globe from solar flares. B-films like Earth’s Final Hours can be fun to enjoy, but for this product, it’s also a game of guess what set location was used. With some of SyFy’s products being made in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, the inevitability will occur when several outdoor locales start getting used over and over again. After many years of watching products made in this region, all the most well known sets are too recognizable.

And followers of Bruce Davison’s works (X-Men, Ghost Whisperer) will find his portrayal of Rothman to be gently eccentric. He’s actually very fitting as the mad scientist who can save the planet. But ultimately, it’s not up to him. He’s the highlight of this film than the main cast. But sadly, the movie is not about him. Had it of been, all the pseudo science he is babbling about could start to make sense, including how the planet can be saved. This character is sadly underutilized, and he’s the perfect character to say that the world can be saved by steam. Had the hole been made in the ocean—with all the water falling into the Earth’s molten core—but instead, it all happened on land. What a shame.

Overall: 5 out of 10.

The film's fan page can be found here:

The Earth's Final Hours on Facebook

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