Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

2012: Doomsday Blu-ray Movie Review

Better that the world end than have to suffer through this movie again.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 14, 2010

There's a reason for everything.

Those who thought Disaster movie maestro Roland Emmerich's 2012 was bad ain't seen nothin' yet. Love it or hate, at least Emmerich's film had behind it slick production values, seamless special effects, quality actors, and a director who knows what he's doing. Enter 2012: Doomsday, a knockoff picture from "mockbuster" studio The Asylum that, like all of their films, is absent those basic attributes that can generally be seen as the qualities necessary to craft a passable motion picture. For all its bad acting, awful special effects, miserable pacing, confused structure, and continuity and technical errors, 2012: Doomsday at least steps out of the bad movie comfort zone and tries to build its story around abstract themes such as faith and fate. The key word is "tries." Though admirable, the film falls flat at every turn, and the sheer absence of feeling and emotion is startling. For a movie that combines the end of the world with Christian values, 2012: Doomsday plays as surprisingly dull and meaningless. It feels forced and phony, and proves that concepts alone can't overcome bad writing and atrocious filmmaking.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel bored.

It's the year 2012, and the Earth is bracing for a cataclysmic chain of events that appear suddenly and threaten to tear the world appart. When the Earth slows its rotation along its axis and great earthquakes and storms are predicted, man begins to believe that the Mayan end-of-days predictions were actually correct. The U.S. West Coast is evacuated ahead of the pending disaster, but several lives are about to converge in what may very well be a last-ditch effort to save mankind. An archeologist has recently unearthed the impossible, a symbol of the crucifix buried deep within ancient Mayan ruins. A missionary based out of Mexico is trying to find medicine for her tribe, and she is befriended by a photojournalist; the two stumble across a pregnant woman about to give birth. The missionary's father is a scientist who's on the front lines of the information that predicts the world's end. A paramedic who doubts God based on scientific reasoning and the terrors she sees everyday lives with a faithful Christian mother. Each of these individuals are led by what they all believe to be a higher power to the Mexican ruins of Chichen Itza where they must find their collective destiny and usher in a new era for mankind.

In short, 2012: Doomsday is itself a disaster that's not enough to finish off the world, but it is enough to test the limits of even the most ardent watcher of bad movies. There's so much wrong here that the movie's almost overwhelming in just how awful it is, whether the miserable acting, stale direction, or shocking absence of emotion, even in light of the picture's religious themes and ideas of faith and a greater power. The plot is haphazard at best and never makes much sense; the hows and the whys aren't very well realized, but then again, even in a movie like this where plot and emotion should take center stage, they clearly don't matter all that much, so long as the filmmakers can toss in a few really bad-looking CGI shots of crumbling cities or fake-looking snow falling in Mexico. The film seems to want to be part 2012 and part The Day After Tomorrow with a Christian message thrown in; none of the elements work at all, with each competing with one another rather than working in harmony, resulting in a disjointed movie with no flow, no heart, no sense of purpose, and no solid idea as to what's really going on. The best movies of faith don't ask that characters believe blindly; a higher power touches their lives, shapes them over time, and allows the audience to become a part of their spiritual journey. In 2012: Doomsday, characters are instead led by something else: not faith, but their script. The absence of real faith, real lessons, and real meaning is shocking; it shouldn't be given the overall quality of the film, but messages of faith and the power of God to overcome all seem hard to mess up, but this is The Asylum, the studio where bad moviemaking is an art form. For as poorly-realized as the faith angle may be, the rest of the movie just might be worse; the picture's pseudo-tension, awful dialogue, and haphazard structure all work to make a movie that's boring at best and laugh-out-loud funny at worst.

The lack of story cohesion and poorly-realized faith-based elements are enough to ruin the movie, but 2012: Doomsday piles on the bad to a point that it becomes a picture that only gluttons for punishment could watch more than once. With every minute or two the film shifts locations and provides an update as to how many hours remain until Doomsday; rather than work around a real countdown, which might have actually increased tension as the clocked ticked towards zero, the film instead jumps around: there's 8 hours left, then 13, then 19, and so on. It makes no sense and only serves to confuse the viewer and mess up the film's chronology. There's never any idea as to when things are actually happening, and the way the film moves both forwards and backwards in time makes it impossible to keep track on everyone's progress, not that it matters all that much. Even if it did work, it's hard to take the end of the world seriously when reports of devastated cities and the largest weather phenomenons in history are spoken of as mundanely as the traffic or sports: "In other news today, I-35 is backed up due to construction, a typhoon destroyed Australia, and the Astros beat the Pirates, 5-2." It would almost be funny if the movie weren't already so painfully lethargic and mind-numbingly dull. Perhaps worst of all are the many little problems that somehow went unnoticed on the set or in the editing room and that stick out like a sore thumb throughout the movie. The movie takes place in 2012, but watch for a major character whose desk calendar still says 2007; either he's the laziest man in the world, or the production design team just didn't care or were too lazy to change it out. A random piece of the crew's equipment is plainly visible in one scene that takes place in the middle of the jungle, and in another, some kind of cloth is clearly hanging over the top of the camera lens. These are things even amateurs can readily spot; what does that make the good folks at The Asylum?

2012: Doomsday Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

2012: Doomsday features a surprisingly steady 1080p transfer. It's not going to be mistaken for a cream-of-the-crop sort of image, but Echo Bridge's effort with 2012: Doomsday is borderline commendable. The image is sharp and crisp with minimal noise and a fair amount of depth, despite its video-like sheen. Detailing is adequate-to-strong, particularly in close-up shots of faces, clothes, and rocky cave formations. Colors are steady and generally vibrant, save for some of the later scenes where the frame is washed out by snow and gray skies. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot some banding, chunky backgrounds, poor color gradations, and pasty flesh tones in a few scenes, but such no-no's are the exception rather than the rule. Blacks are decent, and save for the aforementioned pastiness, flesh tones appear accurately rendered in most scenes. 2012: Doomsday isn't going to be the HDTV seller's demo disc of choice, but it looks quite good for a bargain release of a cheap movie.

2012: Doomsday Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

2012: Doomsday's Blu-ray release features a 2.0 soundtrack, but at least it's a DTS-HD MA 2.0 lossless soundtrack. Though lossless, listeners shouldn't expect much from this one. It's a decent enough track that's supportive of the film's wishy-washy sound effects; it plays as a bit crunchy and undefined, but chalk that up to a poor mix rather than a poor Blu-ray soundtrack. The track captures a decent series of lows in support of the most destructive action sequences, such as during tornado ravaging San Diego in chapter seven. Music is suitably reproduced, enjoying a fair bit of spacing and a crisp, sharp presentation. Atmospherics are, of course, limited to the front; while listeners will never feel immersed into the interior of an ambulance travelling down a bumpy street or a Mexican jungle environment, the track manages to create a basic sound field that sets the stage for every scene well enough. Dialogue is clear and focused, but there are some obvious lip sync issues present at various junctures throughout the track. All in all, 2012: Doomsday is obviously no match for Sony's monster lossless soundtrack that accompanies the real 2012, but this is a solid all-around mix considering the disc's budget pricing and the film's meager origins.

2012: Doomsday Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included on this Blu-ray release of 2012: Doomsday.

2012: Doomsday Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A "mockbuster" with a spiritual overtone. That's an unlikely pairing if there ever was one, but leave it to The Asylum to mix anything and everything in hopes of finding a formula for success. 2012: Doomsday has its heart in the right place, and the message of faith is, in and of itself, fine, but the execution is terrible; there's no feeling, no connection to the story or the characters, and considering all the problems with the film that exist around the periphery of the story -- the bad acting, the poor attention to detail, the shoddy direction -- it's just too much to swallow and the message too blatant to work. 2012: Doomsday gets a passing grade for effort, but everything else about the movie ranks as a total disaster. Echo Bridge's Blu-ray release features a decent technical presentation and no extras. Fans of faith-based films and Disaster movies might want to give this a rental, but caution: this is a bad, slow movie with no real value; there are better faith-based films out there, and it wouldn't be a sin to follow them up with a screening of the real 2012.