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In the Marianas Trench, mid-Pacific, an underwater experiment triggers a massive tsunami which hits Hawaii hard and is heading for the West Coast. Geologist Dr. Vickers is called in by the military to try and find a solution to stop the wave, while a university professor and his student also try and find a solution...
Co-written by Keith Parker who also penned Aliens vs. Avatars (2011) and Yeti vs. Sasquatch (2015), Stormageddon starts with a nonsense premise and pads it to feature length with mind-numbing "storyline" and gratuitous extra characters who serve no purpose.
While many disaster films, particularly the low budget variety, have to use a lot of padding inbetween the 'action' scenes, Stormageddon just takes the biscuit with one of the genre's worst and most ineptly written scripts. Two seperate sets of scientists dully talk mumbo-jumbo and come up with theories about how to stop the wave, while their partners really slowly try and drive out of LA, randomly breaking down or being held-up in a desperate attempt to add drama. Literally nothing of interest or significance happens for the vast majority of the runtime and there is simply no sense of threat or urgency about their actions as the film drags along to a non-existant climax and nonsense ending.
While making a film on a low budget is always a challenge and director David Palmieri does at least manage to shoot the dialogue scenes in a watchable way (even if the writing itself is awful), the special effects are simply woeful and the film has clearly tried to achieve far more than it can manage - the result is that the disaster scenes that should be highlights are instead just silly. To make things worse even the live action exteriors betray the lack of budget - the fleeing family members inexplicably, endlessly drive down back alleys (because the film makers presumably could not afford to close roads) while the 'climax' is just a mess of shoddy CGI needing a denoument exposition to actually tell us what has happened.
A few familiar faces crop up including Reggie Bannister (of the Phantasm series), Priscilla Barnes and Joe Estevez in small parts. The rest of the casting seems to be completely random, with acting ranging from bored to awful, most of the cast look like they have been borrowed from a low budget porn film. The one actor who looks good in this whole project is Michael Harris as a gunnery sergeant, he seems to be the only person actually trying to act.
A number of low budget natural disaster films have proven to be enjoyable (cf Miami Magma (2010)) but Stormageddon is just horrible - casting is abnormally poor, the CGI effects are just comical and the storyline pads out four minutes worth of nonsense plot into a feature length by just dragging scenes on endlessly. For a film with the production values and cast of a porno, it is surprising that the director, who has worked on several softcore productions like Porn Shoot Massacre (2009) did not add any gratuitous sex scenes that might have allayed the boredom somewhat. Far beyond the 'so bad its good' level, this is just a painful slog and worth specifically avoiding.
| Anyone famous in it? | No-one well known. |
| Directed by anyone interesting? | David Palmieri - an extremely low budget film maker who has previously helmed Captain Battle: Legacy War (2013) and was cameraman on 3D Bikini Beach Babes Issue #3 (2012) and Porn Shoot Massacre (2009) |
| Any gore or violence ? | None. |
| Any sex or nudity? | None. |
| Who is it for? | Impossible to recommend to anyone. |
| Visuals | Aspect Ratio - 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Colour. A clean digitial transfer with no problems. |
| Audio | English stereo |
| Subtitles | None. |
| Extras | The disc includes:
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| Region | Region 0 (ALL) - PAL |
| Other regions? | Released by Peace Arch Trinity in the US in January 2015 as Disaster Wars |
| Cuts? | Believed to be fully uncut. Print language is English. |