Snowmageddon Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Snowmageddon Blu-ray Movie Review

Hot stuff or brain freeze?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 15, 2012

Best Christmas ever!

Credit Snowmageddon for thinking outside the box or, in this case, inside the globe. The title suggests another Disaster movie built around the wonderful world of out-of-whack weather, something along the lines of a dusting of snow becomes a blizzard becomes an unstoppable freak force of mother nature's version of an extinction-level white Christmas winter wonderland, through which people still miraculously with power tap away on the computer and drive into the heart of the storm to stop it before the entire world becomes one giant snowball. Fortunately, the makers of Snowmageddon spare their audience the usual drivel and instead craft a halfway novel, partially entertaining movie that's half Disaster flick and half Fantasy. It's sort of like Stephen King's Under the Dome meets The Day After Tomorrow meets The Lord of the Rings on a very tiny scale. It works well enough to satisfy on a lazy day, but at the end of the day it is just another low-budget SyFy clunker, albeit another low-budget SyFy clunker with a bit of originality to share.

Let it Snowmageddon.

The chilly small town of Normal, Alaska sometimes seems like its own little world. And today, it is. Sort of. The day began as a routine holiday season morning. Youngster Rudy Miller (Dylan Matzke) is spending the day with his Dragon fantasy game. Mother Beth (Laura Harris) is preparing for a helicopter flight that will transport two world-class snowboarders to a top Alaskan peak. Daughter Jennifer (Magda Apanowicz) is obsessing over one of the snowboarders, and father John (David Cubitt) is wrapping a few last-minute gifts for the needy folks in another town. Their day is turned upside down when a mysterious Christmas box appears on the family doorstep. Rudy's the lucky one to first reveal its contents, contents that confound them all and anger the Miller family dog. Inside he finds a snow globe, though certainly not any ordinary snow globe made in China and plucked from the Wal-Mart shelf. This is a special, hand-crafted snow globe, larger than most, and depicting Normal within its sphere.

It's an odd thing to show up on a doorstep, but it remains in the home, despite its curious nature and the dog's vehement objections. John soon receives a call from town for help. It seems that a fissure has opened up down the main drag. Rudy notices a new crack in the globe, too, running right down around the same area as the new one that's just swallowed up a healthy chunk of the road. Beth and Jennifer later encounter some unusual turbulence after successfully dropping off the snowboarders. They're forced down and stranded in the cold with seemingly no hope of survival, while around the same time the unlucky snowboarders find themselves in the midst of some deadly ice shrapnel that seems to come from nowhere. Back in town, the old broken square clock ticks anew, folks are trapped and injured all around main street, and Rudy comes to realize that somehow, some way, the mystery snow globe is to blame. As the town finds itself inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world and as time ticks away towards another disaster, it would seem the only hope is to destroy the cursed globe, but of course it won't be so easy as heaving it up against the wall and shattering Rudy's precious into a thousand pieces.

Snowmageddon's commendable reliance on other than the usual array of Disaster movie elements, along with its small scale, set it apart from a made-for-television pack that's grown stale. Certainly Snowmageddon shares the unfortunate traits of bad visual effects, mediocre acting, and dramatic ineptitude with its peers, but the appearance of novelty and a little more attention paid to plot rather than the next computer visual does make this one a little more palatable. The filmmakers do the best they seemingly can with the budget provided; the core story and small town setting mean minimal location hassles, while the expansive snow-covered terrain makes for an easy palette on which to paint various pictures of CGI disaster. Even as helicopters fly by in a low-end digital blur, snow cats running from cracking ice look like micro machines, and "ice missiles" actually look sillier than they sound, the movie refuses to lean too heavily on its low-end digital effects, a fatal flaw in other movies of this sort that make them the nonsensical highlight. Here, they're part of the supporting cast, allowing the story -- for as sometimes awkward, emotionally vacant, and dramatically barren as it may be -- to dominate the movie. Snowmageddon at least puts forward a good effort, and audiences are rewarded with a dumbed-down Disaster flick that's not on par with the visual opulence of a Roland Emmerich film but that at least aims to keep viewers interested and tell a story that hasn't been told before, particularly on the low-end SyFy canvas.

Snowmageddon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Snowmageddon features a technically adequate but ultimately pedestrian high definition transfer. The movie begins dubiously, with pale blacks and excess noise. It settles into a bland comfort zone, however, offering adequately crisp and well-defined details under a manageable layer of grain. Facial lines, plaid shirt textures, and wooden accents around the Miller home generally impress, but Blu-ray fans have seen better in countless films. The same may be said of the color palette. It's unremarkably fine, presenting natural greens, clothing hues, and blinding white snow with basic accuracy. Blacks tighten up after a rocky start, and flesh tones never betray what appears to be natural shades. No major banding, blocking, wear and tear, or other eyesores are present in significant quantities. This isn't a top-level transfer, but it satisfies on every basic level.

Snowmageddon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Likewise, Snowmageddon's Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack gets the job done with no major hiccups, but it's a forgettable presentation at the end of the day. The track offers fair musical clarity and spacing. Directional effects are basically effective, whether sound transition from one speaker to the next or pinpoint elements in a specific place around the listening area. Bass tightly rumbles but doesn't loosely rattle. There is some pleasing ambience, such as the precise chimes of the town clock, a light wind that blows about the stage, or the hum of electrical currents. Some of the action-oriented effects impress a bit more. For instance, ice shards pierce through the listening area with ferocity in one scene. Dialogue is clear and focused about the front-middle portion of the stage. All told, this is a fine track that won't be remembered for its brilliance but that is to be commended for its ability to get the basics across with little effort.

Snowmageddon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Snowmageddon contains no special features.

Snowmageddon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Snowmageddon takes a turn away from the usual small-scale Disaster movies in favor of one with a unique plot and a reliance on story rather than awful digital effects. Certainly neither the story nor the effects are of much value, but one must at least credit the movie for going in a different direction, even if it walks along the same well-worn path for much of its runtime. It's not a case of "seen one, seen 'em all" -- this one is just different enough to stick out from the crowd -- but Snowmageddon is still only for hardcore fans of SyFy Disaster films. Anchor Bay's Blu-ray release of Snowmageddon features good video and audio. No extras are included. Rent it on a slow day.