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4.4/10
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When a killer alien creature, who is misunderstood, begins killing specific members of a small town, a school psychologist learns of its link to a young boy's tragic childhood, and his adopt... Read allWhen a killer alien creature, who is misunderstood, begins killing specific members of a small town, a school psychologist learns of its link to a young boy's tragic childhood, and his adoptive father's dark secret.When a killer alien creature, who is misunderstood, begins killing specific members of a small town, a school psychologist learns of its link to a young boy's tragic childhood, and his adoptive father's dark secret.
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- 2 nominations total
Lee de Broux
- Cook Harlan
- (as Lee DeBroux)
Brandon Michael DePaul
- Frankie Carter
- (as Brandon de Paul)
- Director
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Dr Jennifer Stillman is a child psychologist who moves to a small town for a break from the big city life. On her first day placed in the town's school, she notices a strange young boy called Ben. Taking the opportunity to dig a little deeper into the clearly troubled lad, she learns that he was adopted by his father (Michael) after his real mother died and nobody knew who his real father was. However she doesn't know quite what to think about Ben's belief that his father was an alien and that he will return one day; but when someone or something is killing people in the small town could it be that Ben is the only one that knows what is really going on?
With a relatively well-known cast and an appealing title, I decided to give this film a go but must admit that I didn't think it was that good although maybe worth giving a go if you're in an undemanding mood. The plot offers mystery that appealed to me but it reveals its secrets very early on by revealing the rubbery beast quite early on in the proceedings. In fact it reveals so much early on that I realized that there must be more to the story than this, there must be some sort of twist and turn coming at the end or else this will have been one very dull movie. For what it's worth, there are some plot 'revelations' towards the end but they are not that good and they certainly don't make up for the rest of the film being a rather dull affair that occasionally throws in some rubbery effects. This part should create tension and mystery but it doesn't and the direction the plot takes comes across rather like a series of ideas that have been lifted from better films and not fully delivered here. It has some entertainment value but it would have worked better as a short film (30 minutes long) because here it feels rather stretched.
Edner was good as Ben, he wasn't as horribly cute as he could have been and he deals with the 'running and being scared' side of things just fine. Kinski overplays her part and makes it too earnest and serious. I'm not suggesting that she needed to be all-singing, all-dancing, but there is a difference between being convincingly earnest and coming across as really forcing the performance of being earnest Kinski does the latter rather than the former and she didn't do anything for me at all. Quaid is his usual self and is a nice addition; he does well with what he is given to work with. Support is quite good from Tobolowsky, Groener and a few others but generally this film is not about the characters it is about the plot and, in that regard, it isn't as satisfying as I had hoped it would be.
Overall this is watchable once but it is not much cop after that. The plot marks out its stall early on and tells us a lot but then settles on that for a while, making the majority of the film come across as a bit dull. When the twists and turns do come, they are a bit flat and uninspired and it never gets anywhere near the atmosphere that it wants to have and it doesn't really work on any level. Maybe genre fans will like it but I can find little to recommend it for and would advise that there are better films with similar ideas which develop and deliver them much better than this below-average made-for-television effort.
With a relatively well-known cast and an appealing title, I decided to give this film a go but must admit that I didn't think it was that good although maybe worth giving a go if you're in an undemanding mood. The plot offers mystery that appealed to me but it reveals its secrets very early on by revealing the rubbery beast quite early on in the proceedings. In fact it reveals so much early on that I realized that there must be more to the story than this, there must be some sort of twist and turn coming at the end or else this will have been one very dull movie. For what it's worth, there are some plot 'revelations' towards the end but they are not that good and they certainly don't make up for the rest of the film being a rather dull affair that occasionally throws in some rubbery effects. This part should create tension and mystery but it doesn't and the direction the plot takes comes across rather like a series of ideas that have been lifted from better films and not fully delivered here. It has some entertainment value but it would have worked better as a short film (30 minutes long) because here it feels rather stretched.
Edner was good as Ben, he wasn't as horribly cute as he could have been and he deals with the 'running and being scared' side of things just fine. Kinski overplays her part and makes it too earnest and serious. I'm not suggesting that she needed to be all-singing, all-dancing, but there is a difference between being convincingly earnest and coming across as really forcing the performance of being earnest Kinski does the latter rather than the former and she didn't do anything for me at all. Quaid is his usual self and is a nice addition; he does well with what he is given to work with. Support is quite good from Tobolowsky, Groener and a few others but generally this film is not about the characters it is about the plot and, in that regard, it isn't as satisfying as I had hoped it would be.
Overall this is watchable once but it is not much cop after that. The plot marks out its stall early on and tells us a lot but then settles on that for a while, making the majority of the film come across as a bit dull. When the twists and turns do come, they are a bit flat and uninspired and it never gets anywhere near the atmosphere that it wants to have and it doesn't really work on any level. Maybe genre fans will like it but I can find little to recommend it for and would advise that there are better films with similar ideas which develop and deliver them much better than this below-average made-for-television effort.
Preposterous sci-fi trash in which a little boy believes himself a son of an alien. Based on this account, he waits for his 'alien' father returns to bring him back for another planet. Suddenly, a strange creature appears at the little town where the boy lives with an adopted father and starts to kill the inhabitants. The premise of this misfire could have rendered an acceptable film but the final result is ridiculous, boring and unbelievable. Just Miss Kinsky is a delight to see. I give this a 03 (three).
There are some noteworthy names and familiar faces involved here, not least effects maestro Stan Winston. While Terence Gross isn't otherwise known to me, I did quite enjoy his 2000 feature 'Hotel Splendide,' which boasted outstanding, fanciful aesthetics and dark humor. How might all these folks and the anticipated creature effects fare in a TV movie - a medium not generally well known for high quality, or originality?
Well. Uh. The writing sure is heavy-handed, isn't it? And it sure does rely on tropes and ideas so well-worn that we're well past beating a dead horse and entering the territory of "pulverizing the dead horse's bones one stroke at a time." Big city woman in a small town; small town peculiar, and unfriendly to strangers; small town unfriendly to modern medicine, science, or social ideations, including the great mysterious discipline of "Psychology." Adults being abuse to young kid; young kid expected to conform to all adult expectations, and being bullied and treated different. Aliens, monsters, supernatural/unnatural something or other; obligatory, gratuitous "creepy" imagery and sequences; the big city woman newcomer is sure to find out what's going on and connect it to this one specific kid that's different. Characters making abjectly poor decisions. And so on, and so on.
It's not that 'The day the world ended' is specifically bad. It's that the flick altogether gives away at least half of its plot within the first third, and that in every last capacity, we've effectively seen this before. Every idea in the writing has been employed countless times. Every thought in Gross' direction can be plucked from any of countless genre pieces - theatrical release and TV movie alike - from the better part of at least thirty years. Same for the editing, and the cinematography, and the music; the actors give decent performances, but sometimes they are guided into acting that's downright ham-fisted, or at least just unremarkable. From the beginning this is a title that we can "watch" rather passively, without actively engaging, and that only becomes more true as the minutes tick by. That's fine, I suppose, but if that's the type of viewing experience being offered, then we don't have much reason to bother in the first place, do we?
I do appreciate Winston's effects. While I'm usually of the mind that horror should suggest more than show - keeping the shock as a surprise - in this instance I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if we'd seen a lot more of the creature a lot sooner. I say this because with the picture being so roundly tried and true, and so readily revealing of its story, the minutes start to drag on. The pacing is fine in and of itself, but if we were sitting to watch ninety minutes of actors reciting the Latin alphabet, then the result would suffer in the same way this does with its very common notions. In turn, for whatever mild entertainment 'The day the world ended' has to offer, it's arguably just as true that the viewing experience is a bit of a chore.
When you get down to it this is suitably passable to whittle away some time on a quiet day. Maybe that's all it needs to be. Keep your expectations in check, and definitely don't go out of your way for it, but so long as you know what you're getting into - and how could you not? - then there are worse ways to spend your time. Take that as you will.
Well. Uh. The writing sure is heavy-handed, isn't it? And it sure does rely on tropes and ideas so well-worn that we're well past beating a dead horse and entering the territory of "pulverizing the dead horse's bones one stroke at a time." Big city woman in a small town; small town peculiar, and unfriendly to strangers; small town unfriendly to modern medicine, science, or social ideations, including the great mysterious discipline of "Psychology." Adults being abuse to young kid; young kid expected to conform to all adult expectations, and being bullied and treated different. Aliens, monsters, supernatural/unnatural something or other; obligatory, gratuitous "creepy" imagery and sequences; the big city woman newcomer is sure to find out what's going on and connect it to this one specific kid that's different. Characters making abjectly poor decisions. And so on, and so on.
It's not that 'The day the world ended' is specifically bad. It's that the flick altogether gives away at least half of its plot within the first third, and that in every last capacity, we've effectively seen this before. Every idea in the writing has been employed countless times. Every thought in Gross' direction can be plucked from any of countless genre pieces - theatrical release and TV movie alike - from the better part of at least thirty years. Same for the editing, and the cinematography, and the music; the actors give decent performances, but sometimes they are guided into acting that's downright ham-fisted, or at least just unremarkable. From the beginning this is a title that we can "watch" rather passively, without actively engaging, and that only becomes more true as the minutes tick by. That's fine, I suppose, but if that's the type of viewing experience being offered, then we don't have much reason to bother in the first place, do we?
I do appreciate Winston's effects. While I'm usually of the mind that horror should suggest more than show - keeping the shock as a surprise - in this instance I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if we'd seen a lot more of the creature a lot sooner. I say this because with the picture being so roundly tried and true, and so readily revealing of its story, the minutes start to drag on. The pacing is fine in and of itself, but if we were sitting to watch ninety minutes of actors reciting the Latin alphabet, then the result would suffer in the same way this does with its very common notions. In turn, for whatever mild entertainment 'The day the world ended' has to offer, it's arguably just as true that the viewing experience is a bit of a chore.
When you get down to it this is suitably passable to whittle away some time on a quiet day. Maybe that's all it needs to be. Keep your expectations in check, and definitely don't go out of your way for it, but so long as you know what you're getting into - and how could you not? - then there are worse ways to spend your time. Take that as you will.
There are definitely too many references to other movies and story traditions in this flick. It starts like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (the heroine driving a New Beetle yech!), it continues with dark humor like a novel by Kafka (heroine with a badly defined mission comes to a strange place and meets a bunch of strangely hostile stereotype comic book characters of uncertain authority), then there's a whiff of Twin Peaks (hints of sexual abuse of minors and general depravity in the backwoods), then in comes E.T. (minor bonds with extraterrestrial), then it turns out that minor's mother was regarded by the populace as a kind of a witch and was treated accordingly. On top of that, there is a clear reference to a 50ies horror B-movie. (Hence the confusing title which has nothing to do with the story told here).
The references in themselves are not really bad or a rip-off. However, it would have been more fun, had they tied all that stuff together in a more coherent, rigid and orderly fashion. The pairing of psychology and the supernatural clearly does not work here. I didn't manage to find out what story the movie wants to tell and I suspect its makers could never really make up their mind. This is a pity, as the cast is quite good. I hope Nastassja Kinski still has a long career ahead of her. Not only for her looks, but also because she really is a versatile actress who in my opinion still didn't get her share of good movie parts. Randy Quaid and Bobby Edner are equally convincing in their roles, within the apparent limits of the script. The same goes for the rest of the characters who are parodies or stereotypes.
The references in themselves are not really bad or a rip-off. However, it would have been more fun, had they tied all that stuff together in a more coherent, rigid and orderly fashion. The pairing of psychology and the supernatural clearly does not work here. I didn't manage to find out what story the movie wants to tell and I suspect its makers could never really make up their mind. This is a pity, as the cast is quite good. I hope Nastassja Kinski still has a long career ahead of her. Not only for her looks, but also because she really is a versatile actress who in my opinion still didn't get her share of good movie parts. Randy Quaid and Bobby Edner are equally convincing in their roles, within the apparent limits of the script. The same goes for the rest of the characters who are parodies or stereotypes.
Horror film finds a killer alien, who is just misunderstood, devouring people. A school psychologist (Nastassja Kinski) investigates the death of a student's mother and finds the boy (Bobby Edner) believes he is the son of the being. His earthling father (Randy Quaid) is also a doctor who has the boy in his care and holds that it is all in the boy's imagination...or is it? A good cast and an original premise high-light this mediocre made-for-TV monster flick. The creature effects aren't bad but the film generally lacks tension, suspense and gore and is rather predictable despite a good, well-written finale and adequate direction from Terence Gross. Interestingly, the title has absolutely nothing to do with the film (Not to mention the fact that this movie is completely unrelated to the 1956 original Roger Corman film barring the same name!). Check out the "face-skinning scene for some hilariously bad effects. 4.5/10.
Did you know
- TriviaTwo of the posters on Ben's bedroom wall are covers from the magazine "Astounding Science Fiction" (later "Analog"): the December 1947 edition featuring "Aesop" by Clifford D. Simak, and the October 1953 issue with cover art for "The Gulf Between" by Tom Godwin.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Beasts from the Darkside: 5 Movie Collection (2016)
Details
- Runtime1 hour 31 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was The Day the World Ended (2001) officially released in India in English?
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