Final Days of Planet Earth Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		1.0
Audio		1.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.0

Final Days of Planet Earth Blu-ray Movie Review

A truly awful movie makes for one of the worst Blu-ray discs available.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 8, 2009

This is close encounters off the worst kind.

Why is it that the really bad movies can't even get the picture on the cover right? Driven to Kill's box art hints at the fact that the action takes place in Russia, though in reality New Jersey serves as the primary location. The cover art for Final Days of Planet Earth features some insect that never appears in the film; the baddies here are overgrown green Praying Mantises, not...mosquitos? It doesn't really matter, anyway, because nobody will remember this drivel in five centuries, five years, or five minutes. One of the most disposable, disappointing, and painful movie experiences of all time, Final Days of Planet Earth is a disaster movie without a disaster, a 3-hour miniseries that takes two hours and fifty minutes to do anything. There's no denying the allure of end-of-the-world, alien invasion, and giant insects movies. Knowing, Signs, and Eight Legged Freaks are all fairly recent examples of movies that have excelled in their depiction of each respective mini-genre. Unfortunately, the only disaster in Final Days of Planet Earth is Final Days of Planet Earth, the movie's only "aliens" and "bugs" nothing but overgrown Praying Mantises with a liking for human flesh and an aversion to hand grenades. A story ripe for an entertaining mindless romp that sees the world inching closer to a new race of green-skinned insect masters instead plays out with the excitement of a Ben Stein Economics lecture.

Not exactly the creature that's on the box.

A space shuttle crew returns home from a mission to the moon with little fanfare. Meanwhile, an archeologists named Lloyd (Gil Bellows) accidentally upsets a group of schoolchildren and is later accosted and scolded by one child's aunt, Marianne (Sue Mathew), an insect sprayer by day and Ph.D. candidate by night. Eventually, Lloyd and Marianne meet up again waiting to see the Ombudsman at City Hall, Lloyd to complain about his dig site being paved over and Marianne to accept a new contract to spray the facility for bugs (oh, the irony!). Lloyd begins to figure out that something may be amiss in the subterranean basements of City Hall. After all, the man behind the counter isn't blinking. Lloyd and crew eventually discover a bloody science lab below, filled with corpses, body parts, and other assorted goodies. Lloyd, Marianne, and the band of misfits that follow them soon learn that the Earth is about to be overtaken by giant Praying Mantises from another world, their leader none other than Darryl Hannah (Blade Runner) who is trying her best to look like Nicole Kidman. The heroes eventually learn that their only hope of beating the monsters lies with the captain of the aforementioned shuttle mission, Phillips (Campbell Scott). The insects seem to be highly allergic to him, though they do seem to be taking a liking to his hair and fingernails. Perhaps all they want is to open a beauty salon; that would certainly make for a more interesting movie.

Final Days of Planet Earth seems slightly reminiscent of Alien and borrows heavily from "V," one of the most successful Science Fiction miniseries. Obviously, Final Days of Planet Earth is far inferior to either of those classics, mostly because it enjoys the pacing of watching water boil, though even on a low setting that would end long before this movie. Final Days of Planet Earth runs with the standard miniseries opening act, slowly introducing the characters that will come to define the movie as it wears on -- and on, and on . . . Unfortunately, it barely moves past this point, and even when they all become interconnected and start unraveling the mystery, hardly anything happens. Final Days of Planet Earth takes forever to get going, and the few brief moments of action or suspense are overwhelmed by long periods of nothingness, showcasing both good and evil characters talking in circles about the plot through bad dialogue all around. Without tension, without atmosphere, without much honest-to-goodness action, Final Days of Planet Earth offers little more than long stretches of lazy nothingness that only allow audiences to revel in the horrible production values, bad continuity, poor plotting, lazy direction, and below average acting. The only upside here is the presence of a surprising amount of gore in one sequence, far more than expected of a made-for-TV miniseries. Final Days of Planet Earth is no Saw V in that regard, but audiences with the weakest of constitutions might find one or two shots a bit too much to stomach.

Final Days of Planet Earth Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Final Days of Planet Earth features a well-below-average 1080p, MPEG-2 encoded, 1.78:1-framed transfer. At its very best, this is a cut-and-dry, dull, but passable image that features acceptable color reproduction and below average detail, depth, and clarity. At its worst, and for much of the movie, it's a mess. Details appear flat and completely unconvincing, and images that tend to look good on even average Blu-ray discs, for example close-ups of faces, look completely lifeless and unrealistic. Facial hair doesn't look natural but rather digitally added after the fact. Save for a few bright outdoor scenes, this one takes on a terribly dull, drab, and sometimes hazy appearance. Blacks are consistently poor, usually veering towards a shade of gray and crushing details at every turn. Worst of all, the transfer exhibits all sorts of problems, and most every scene exhibits one or several at all times, with several particularly bad shots showcasing all of them. Blocking, contrast wavering, aliasing, banding, it's all here, and as a result this Blu-ray release of Final Days of Planet Earth never looks better than a bad broadcast image.

Final Days of Planet Earth Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Final Days of Planet Earth's various soundtrack options don't impress much more than the video. The pair of lossy 5.1 options -- one each of the DTS and Dolby Digital varieties -- offer a deficiency of listenability. For some reason, each track emphasizes the back right speaker; it plays sound effects and music at a much higher volume than anywhere else in the soundstage. An early scene that features a space shuttle cruising towards the viewer and passing over the left shoulder places the emphasis of the effect in the back right; occasionally shuffling between the PCM and DTS/Dolby Digital tracks during the movie reveals that the issue remains throughout. Fortunately, dialogue remains focused straight up the middle, but there's no balance to either track, the result an unlistenable yet oddly amusing experience that will have listeners shuffling over to the only worthwhile option, a PCM 2.0 uncompressed soundtrack. For obvious reasons, this one eliminates the overabundant back right channel and sends all its information to the front speakers. This one fares better; it's passable for the movie and gets the job done but offers little else. Sound effects often lack basic definition, most playing as a garbled jumble of sound and rarely do they seem to match up with the on-screen imagery with even a modicum of believability; the rustling of papers in an early scene or the crashing of a shopping cart later on both serve as prime examples. Though generally stable enough, dialogue occasionally sounds muddy and unintelligible. Overall, none of the audio options are worth much here, but the PCM track is the best of the bunch.

Final Days of Planet Earth Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Final Days of Planet Earth features only 'Do You Believe in Aliens?' Behind the Scenes Interviews (1080p, 12:03). This piece contains the cast and crew discussing their thoughts on whether or not aliens exist.

Final Days of Planet Earth Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A poor excuse even for a made-for-TV miniseries, Final Days of Planet Earth somehow takes a good old standby plot and completely ruins it. No atmosphere, no tension, little action, bland characters, poor acting, uninteresting visuals, lame special effects, long stretches of dull dialogue, uninteresting-at-best direction, no production values, and several glaring continuity errors all define Final Days of Planet Earth. It's not as if anyone expects great things from these sorts of movies, but it's really hard to trash a concept like this, and Final Days of Planet Earth does just that. Adding insult to injury is a terrible Blu-ray release with one of the worst transfers yet to grace the format, a barely passable soundtrack, and a throwaway supplement. This disc is impossible to recommend even in light of its bargain-basement price.