Guess what, Homestar Runner was indeed a precursor of language on the internet, as it teached us things and cracked jokes that crappy disaster movies would brazenly weaponize without any shame, remorse or wit.
Yes, indeed that bit from an old Strong Bad Email was forecasting of the “natural disaster suffixation-o-rama” the 2010s would unleash to a – mostly – undeserving public, but since this isn’t about giant insects, arthropods or monsters whose names could make for a tortured title pun… they just called it Ice Quake. I guess “Cryoquake” would have been too snotty and “high brow”.
And even more badly sounding than “Arachnoquake”.
But i’m leading you astray, this doesn’t have “ice spiders”, which is fine since the movie Ice Spiders didn’t have those too, it’s always a free feast on the grave of any kind of shame or reserve.
Look, it was either this or Metal Tornado today, it’s some content till i manage to revise some sprawling long draft. And until i get to see Nightmare Alley later this weekend, more importantly.
I chose this because i could fire it up on Amazon Prime Video without having to look for the DVD, so i don’t know if you should consider yourself lucky… or anything, really.
Ice Quake is the tale of your generic ass disaster movie family living in a snowy region, in this case Alaska, and during their trip to chop down their christmas tree…. on Christmas’ eve, but guess what, the icy lands have previously start cracking and spewing geysers of liquid methane, due to a quake in the region. And it could lead to the whole world blowing up, unless our hero and geologist, Michael Webster, finds a solution in 90 minutes and a rhythm that easily allows for ad breaks.
Love how this is set in Alaska only so the military can suspect “them Ruskis” being somehow involved, and of course the military won’t listen to the scientists telling them how to deal with the situation, until they realize the scientists were right, gotta work some kind of conflict in this thing, despite how stupid and akward it looks and is. Same for random filler scenes about people getting caught in the “methane geyser quakes”, we gotta make this thing 90 minutes long to ship it.
At least the main character it’s somewhat smart and its family it’s about the same, they have some survival chops and aren’t complete idiots, so this helps in making you care even a smidge.
It’s another one from our ol’ good friends at CineTel, and i will admit, i do go into these expecting them to be bad or laughable in some way, hoping they would feature some odd scenes or weird stuff alongside the expected disaster stuff, but here’s there nothing of that and even putting that aside… i’m struggling to even find things to talk about one way or another. Fittingly barren, i guess.
The special effects – for example – are cheap and pretty bad regardless, but it’s cheap TV disaster movie territory so they are kinda to be expected, same for most of the movie overall, it is what you would come to easily expect.
In a way i can’t really complain, Ice Quake does at the very least fulfill it’s purpose of being elaborate “visual white noise”, something to put in the background and/or follow without having to really care or focus too much on what’s going on to follow the plot, pure filler entertaiment to broadcast and glance upon when you wanna kill some time watching TV, absolutely throwaway.
The fact it lacks some huge ass flaw or odd scenes make it really hard to recommend even if you can consume these cheap “see-and-immediately forget” type of disaster movies like a champ, though in that case you probably don’t need extra incentive, as you’re likely on a completion quest.
Still, Ice Quake sure is a subpar but not that subpar, forgettable and sluggish boring disaster movie.
Wise Cafe (International) 