40 Days and Nights Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

40 Days and Nights Blu-ray Movie Review

Thankfully the movie is only 86 minutes.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 14, 2014

If The Asylum's goal was to make a knock-off of the Josh Hartnett Comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights, it has failed completely. All kidding aside -- because usually The Asylum carefully plans its titles to closely match whatever movie on which it's hoping capitalize -- the studio's 40 Days and Nights, the title a reference to the Biblical story of Noah, is more closely related to Director Roland Emmerich's Disaster movie extraordinaire 2012, even though The Asylum's 2012 Ice Age shares a title with it but actually plays more closely to Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow. Got it? It's confusing, but one thing that's for sure is that this movie wishes it was in the same league as Emmerich's big-budget and very divisive blockbusters, as do all Asylum movies, truth be told.

Tonight's Rockies game: postponed due to rain.

When the Sahara Desert becomes flooded, top scientists spring into action. It is revealed that the Earth has but mere weeks left before the entire planet succumbs to flooding of Biblical proportions. While the public is led to believe that the storms are but a part of an unusually active hurricane season, the top minds in the world get to work on finishing construction of a modern ark. Unfortunately, it'll need much more time. While John (Alex Carter) remains at a secret facility to hurriedly finish preparations on it, his fiancé Tessa (Monica Keena) heads out into the ravaging rains and risks life and limb in search of the essential life man needs to survive, such as bees and moths. Meanwhile, a young woman named Amanda (Hilary Wagner) leads a group of survivors from Pittsburgh on a dangerous journey to St. Louis in hopes of gaining passage on the boat.

With the recent release of, and hubbub surrounding, Paramount's Noah, it seemed like a good time to take a look at The Asylum's own movie featuring a massive flood and a huge boat. Needless to say, this endeavor doesn't find anywhere close to the same level of technical sophistication, storytelling muscle, or general entertainment value as does Director Darren Aronofsky's film. Yet it's head-and-shoulders better than the average Asylum picture, which isn't saying a lot but, hey, it's better than nothing. 40 Days and Nights at least cobbles together a halfway coherent story that's more involved than characters moving from point A to point B, albeit not much. There are three "adventures" in this film, one of which is a journey to safety, another of which is a quest to find life's essentials, and the third a race against time to finish construction on whatever needs done to get the ark seaworthy. The latter part feels a little scattered and too inundated with tech talk, but the film does a decent enough job of creating a sense of urgency around it, anyway, particularly when contrasting it against the increasingly nasty conditions outside. The film, like many other Asylum titles, relies on a seemingly incessant barrage of music to juice up the tension, but the picture holds its own well enough even without it thanks to a fair story and decent structural pace, even as it sinks pretty low compared to the garden-variety motion picture.

Another area where the film finds a little more success over its Asylum peers is in its performances. Although Monica Keena delivers a typically lifeless Asylum performance, Alex Carter does at least add an air of professionalism, an understanding of the film's concept, and a grasp of the art of acting. He carries every scene in which he appears with a screen command that might not hold up next to Russell Crowe or John Cusack, but he at least manages to convey a real sense of person, place, and situation throughout. The remaining performances satisfy requirements, even from the obligatory handful of people who appear just long enough for a brief introduction and a death scene that's implied through some wayward digital effect.

As with all of these Asylum Disaster movies, there's nary a hint of a decent visual to be found. Everything just looks cruddy, whether digitally created buildings or artificial water. Although it's true that special effects do not define a movie, there's no arguing that miserable effects pull the audience out of the movie, regardless of its secondary and supporting qualities. With The Asylum, it's usually the worst of both words, the visuals and the acting/story/pacing battling one another for "worst of" throughout. Fortunately in 40 Days and Nights, the visuals are the clear "loser," impeding an otherwise passable (albeit barely passable) no-budget Disaster movie.

40 Days and Nights Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

40 Days and Nights sails onto Blu-ray with a decent-to-good 1080p transfer. The digital photography, flat and artificial as it may be, does at least produce some well-defined and natural details. Image clarity is a strength, particularly revealed during non-effects close-ups. Faces and clothes reveal borderline incredible detail and complexity. Colors are bold but even throughout, going only murky in some of the digital, rain-heavy shots. As is frequently the case with Asylum titles, skies are consistently gray and blown out, but at least that's to be expected with a movie like this. Light banding is occasionally evident, but noise and compression issues are kept to a minimum. Overall, a good image for a cheap film.

40 Days and Nights Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

40 Days and Nights drenches sound systems with a passably effective DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Though it lacks real, legitimate, transparent clarity and accuracy, it almost makes up for it with a deluge of sound that makes for an aggressive and satisfying companion to a film of this nature. Thunder booms loudly, waves crash heavily, and rain falls heartily. Even if none of that really, truly transforms the listening area into a wet, windy, end-of-times arena, it makes a pretty good sonic impact and helps sell the movie where the visual effects fail to do so. Surrounds are used regularly in all of those action effects while minor, but nevertheless mood critical, ambient support is handled nicely in places like the Colorado facility. The low end produces some quality heft at times and supports the incessant underlying music well. Dialogue flows effortlessly and clearly from the center.

40 Days and Nights Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

40 Days and Nights contains a couple of throwaway supplements.

• Making of Featurette (1080p, 4:21): A brief, generic overview piece.
• Gag Reel (1080p, 1:27).
• Trailers (1080p): Additional Asylum titles.

40 Days and Nights Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

40 Days and Nights isn't The Asylum's worst effort, but that's like saying a batter who strikes out four times in a game and hits a deep fly ball to the wall to go 0-5 is better than a guy who strikes out five times in one game. At the end of the day, the result is pretty much the same, but maybe there's a glimmer of hope for one. 40 Days and Nights at least cobbles together a mostly coherent plot and never runs into pacing problems so bad that a walking trip to the dentist over broken glass with no shoes on sounds better. Disaster movie fans who also happen to be connoisseurs of bad movies might find this one passably entertaining, but more demanding viewers should stay away. The Asylum's Blu-ray release of 40 Days and Nights features passable video and audio. Supplements add almost no value. Worth a rental to the curious viewer, and perhaps a purchase if the store is all but giving it away.