The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Take “Signs”, remove the aliens and place a windy apocalypse and you almost have The Final Storm! A slow-moving, mystery/disaster/suspense hybrid movie, it builds its tension up slowly enough but never really fully realises its full potential.
The Premise
A huge storm leaves a small family cut off from the local village and when a lone stranger stumbles into their house and begins to be otherworldly, talking of the end of days, we’re left to wonder if he’s nuts or is he a prophet!
The Disasters Faced
Windiness, the most unloving uncomfortable sex scene I’ve witnessed in a while, a dead dog, a broken window and an empty supermarket… plus a very large psychedelic thumb!
The Execution
The Final Storm is low key. It’s acting is low-fi for the most part, the script rarely goes beyond the obvious and aside from two sections, the film is very talky. It’s a testament to the actors and the general pacing that I was kept interested throughout. You watch as Luke Perry swings from respectable old fashion valued man to religious freak and back again in the space of five minutes and wonder if he’s unhinged or not. Most of the film hangs off this. Lauren Holly veers for the good side, Steve Bacic the dark side and this drives them apart – not that it looked like they were happy together anyway! Bacic develops a drinking problem, attempts to stir some drunken passion in their sex life (argh nooo) and then gets the hump and goes off for answers. Holly makes Perry sandwiches, admires him fixing a roof tile and then brings him goodies while he’s naked in the bath. Eventually it all boils down to the last ten minutes when all is revealed and the not so shocking revelations are revealed. You wont be surprised but you wont mind the journey getting there.
The Effects
The one effects shot is over in a few seconds and is such a “tsk!” moment it’s overshadowed. However the empty streets and supermarkets are well done so kudos to the set designers for that. I also think the main house is creepy too. I wouldn’t want to live there!
Why It’s Worth Watching
It’s a slow burner, like Sign’s but not in the same league as it I have to say. It has the same camera style (if a bit more docu-style), the same style and ambience. I think it suffers from the fact that you can guess what will happen way before its revealed and its cheap ending doesn’t endear itself to anyone at all. It will spark debate afterwards though.
Best Death
Only one character dies on screen and after they’ve been set on fire and arrive at death’s door, they get given a kung-fu kick for good measure sealing the deal. Well done all round!
Favourite Character
I didn’t like the main couple and Perry is so ambiguous but see-through at the same time I couldn’t warm to him. With the child sulking about his dog all movie, I’ll go with the poor dog that disappeared at the beginning. Someone throw him a bone!
Weirdest Moment
During the supermarket scene, Bacic is busy developing a drink problem and instead of gathering food or anything vaguely resourceful, he harvests a massive box of beer – only for his wife to end up carrying it for him! If my life depended on supplies, a box of beer would be the last of my worries!
Conclusion
It’s a nice twist on the end of the world theme and while it’s not entirely successful at what it sets out to do, its by no means a disgrace and can be enjoyed just as much, if not more, by suspense film fans.
The Asylum are back with the possibly intentionally awfully funny Battle of Los Angeles (absolutely NOT Battle:LA)
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,700 times in 2010. That’s about 14 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 38 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 53 posts. There were 27 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 628kb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was May 30th with 103 views. The most popular post that day was Film Review: Diverted.
The top referring sites in 2010 were gizmodo.com, search.aol.com, exitofhumanity.blogspot.com, google.com, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for disaster movies, disaster movie, flood, impact film, and poseidon film.
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Film Review: Diverted March 2010
Film Review: Impact April 2010
2 comments
Film Review: On the Beach (2000) May 2010
2 comments
Film Review: Nature Unleashed: Avalanche April 2010
1 comment
While I get round to watching and then reviewing more disaster movies, why wait for me to pop reviews up when you can start off conversations about them in our new forum. Slotted in nicely with a new forum collection that also includes the other blog/websites I run, everyone is more than welcome to sign up and chatting. Of course, its new and will be quiet to begin with but over time it will capture more survivors for gossip.
Over the past few years, I as a person have always wanted to do more for when people are in need. When the Asain Tsumani of 2004 hit, it was a time when so many needed help to recover. Now most recently with Haiti, again, the world needs to unite to help people through the worst. For this (and my other) websites and ventures, I have chosen MAP International as my chosen charity to sponsor and give awareness to. The reason for this is that the operate in such an efficient way that 98% of donations actually go to where they need to go, not to paid workers or other businesses demanding the money from the charity. They are one of the most efficient charities around and therefore your money is most likely to make more of a difference the other end.
For 2010, MAP International will have banners on all of my sites and my sim racing cars.
Many thanks for reading,
Simon
