Review of 2012 Doomsday (2008) by Jeffrey L — 18 Dec 2008

In this Asylum original movie, as the Earth hits the Mayan-predicted date of December 21st, 2012, the Earth's poles begin to shift, thus causing natural disasters on a global scale. At the same time, various groups of people (All of which we get to follow during their own separate story arcs during the movie) are somehow brought together to an ancient Mayan Temple in Mexico that could hold the secret to saving the world.

Now, as much as I love Asylum's low-budget rip offs of big budget movies, I personally find their original stuff even better and where they normally shine. This one is no different. The effects are average for Asylum (With the exception of the best damn CGI Tornado I have ever seen in any movie), as is the acting (Apart from one character that constantly stumbles over his lines when sprouting techno-babble â?? he is just horrible), and the plot/story is more engaging while watching the movie, then I would have thought by reading the plot outline, which also includes some very unexpected deaths toward the end, which I did not see coming at all.

Apart from the above-mentioned horrible actor, there were a couple other problems. The main one being an audio issue; the music is much louder then any other audio in the movie, even the quiet music is so loud at times, it makes it difficult to hear what people are saying. I'm surprised they still have this problem, as that was a staple of their early films that I thought would have been fixed by now. However, the music is actually really good so while I couldn't always hear the actors very well, at least the music that blocked them out was really awesome to listen to. I also didn't really like the overly pushy Religious agenda in this movie, however with that said, it did make cause for a few pretty well-done feel-good moments and it started to feel a lot like the Left Behind movies by the end, which despite how preachy they are, I also really liked. Also, this movie has some really good beautiful scenery and locations in it. I know some of it is just stock footage but a lot of it isn't either.

As with all Asylum movies though, there are also some rather large jumps in logic, such as evacuating the entire West coast of the U.S. in about the span of an hour, or two people walking for a couple hours to reach a Native village in the middle of nowhere and then when they go to leave the one dude saying his car is just over the first hill. But you just come to live with such logic when you're used to Asylum-made movies, lol. There is also a semi-love story between a separated couple, but its only tacked on as an afterthought and there is 0 chemistry between the actors. Luckily though, it doesn't take up much screen time at all.

I've been saying it for awhile now, but I'll say it again because it rings true again here; with the exception of the occasional horrible mistake, The Asylum is getting better and better at making decent movies, and if they were to focus all their energy on all original stuff instead of the cheap mockbusters I do also enjoy, and then a slightly larger budget, then within the next couple years one of their movies just might be good enough for theaters.