Shitty Movie Sundays: Post Impact

According to the internet, so it must be true, Post Impact, the 2004 joint US/German production, had a budget of around 3.2 million bucks, and it’s fair to wonder where it all went. It wasn’t in casting. Dean Cain doesn’t cost that much. And it certainly didn’t all go into digital effects, which are among the worst a shitty movie fan is likely to see.

The poor, awful, dreadful quality of this film is nothing new for producers Alan Latham and T.J. Sakasegawa, who have produced dozens of bad films between them. It was nothing new for star Dean Cain, either, who was in a career wasteland for a while after Lois & Clark wrapped in 1997, appearing in many films so poor they would make the folks over at The Asylum blush.

Written and directed by Christoph Schrewe, who shared a writing credit with Torsten Dewi, Post Impact follows Dean Cain as Captain Tom Parker, a Secret Service agent who goes on a post-apocalyptic road trip to Berlin after a comet impact has left the northern hemisphere in a new ice age.

It all began three years before, as the scientific world was celebrating the discovery of a new comet. But, an unexpected impact between the comet and a rogue asteroid sent the comet on a collision course with Earth. While aiding the evacuation of American embassy staff and family members in Berlin, Parker becomes separated from his family and is forced to leave them behind.

Fast-forward three years, and Parker is wandering through snowy Tangier when he comes across Anna Starndorf (Bettina Zimmermann), the daughter of the discoverer of the comet. She’s in town because a space-borne microwave weapon her father also Post Impact movie posterdesigned has somehow been reactivated from the old scientific headquarters in Berlin, and she is to join a team heading up there to investigate. This is perfect for Parker, as he’s been searching for a way to get back north.

Parker convinces the folks in charge to let him join the mission, and off everyone goes.

The other important faces of the mission are its leader, and Parker’s nemesis from back in the day, Colonel Waters (Nigel Bennett), and his second-in-command, Sarah Henley (Joanna Taylor, who was kind enough to provide viewers with this flick’s sole moment of gratuitous nudity). There are other members, but they are mostly nameless, mostly faceless, and with maybe one or two lines between all of them. The other members of the expedition are there to provide some fodder without putting the principals in harm’s way before the final act.

To keep things more interesting for viewers, and to showcase some of that fine CGI mentioned above, the expedition travels in a pair of futuristic Sno-Cat-looking vehicles. They are airdropped into Belgium and travel the frozen wastes of the North European Plain, passing through many poorly-rendered locations before the CGI budget began to get thin. Afterwards, it’s on foot into the old HQ with the microwave weapon controls. There’s action, personal drama, betrayal, and then, resolution. If one is still paying attention by the third act, then one has an excellent tolerance for poor filmmaking. As for this reviewer, once the cartoon roadshow ended with the destruction of the tanks, I began to lose interest. There’s only so much bad dialogue in windowless rooms I can take, the lone bright spot being John Keogh’s unhinged Bond villain at the controls of the killer satellite. His nuttiness I could get behind.

Post Impact is a true bottom-feeder, fit for showing on late nights when every other channel is featuring infomercials. The script is trash, the direction makes it worse, the acting is ever-so-slightly better, but the true shitty star of this flick is the CGI. It is that bad. Post Impact falls way down the Watchability Index, displacing Invasion from Inner Earth at #367. Stay away.

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