San Andreas Quake Review by Bobby LePire. Edited by Courtney McAllister.

 

By my count, The Asylum has produced roughly a bajillion trillion disaster movies. Some have been tie-ins, some have been originals, and two are just so weirdly similar, they bleed into each other. So, is a director who is mostly known for shorts able to make this stand out from the crowd? Coupled with a cast of Asylum regulars, for the most part, yeah.

 

 

The plot isn’t too different from most disaster movies-

Professor Molly Dunn’s (Jhey Castles) latest early earthquake detection devices have just gone live. Using her new data, she discovers that a series of ever increasing quakes will be hitting the San Andreas Fault in a few short hours. Teamed up with her student, the heroic hothead Nick (Jason Woods), Molly makes her way to rescue her pilot husband, Hank (Lane Townsend) and stepdaughter Ali (Grace Van Dien). Does she rescue them? Can Los Angeles and the surrounding area be evacuated in time?

 

This review will be a little different than normal, as I shall discuss all the flaws at one time, and then move on to the good aspects. The why shall make sense soon enough-

 

Jhey Castles, who was so excellent earlier this year in “Hansel Vs. Gretel”, gives a wildly uneven performance. At the start of the movie, as she’s trying to get her family to have breakfast together or as she’s teaching, she is unbelievably chipper. Annoyingly so, in fact. It is impossible to buy her as a professor, because instead of stepping on Nick when he’s being an awful student (refusing to trust in new technology or bother to learn how it works, or believing that earthquake predictions are possible, and throwing a past failure, from 2008, in her face), she just lets it roll, like he accidentally cussed in front of her. Nor does she do anything about it when he confronts her about a grade on a paper. Now, some of that is down to bad writing (or scenes getting cut for time), but by playing everything as relentlessly perky as she does, Castles makes Molly hard to relate to.

 

Hank gives helicopter tours to a couple, () (), and they are meh. When just going about normal, everyday business, they aren’t bad, but when having to react to the CGI’d destruction, they are not credible at all. While they don’t seem bored per se, their reactions aren’t as shocked/ awed/ sad/ etc., as they should be. I get that acting on green screen and/ or reacting to things that aren’t there can be tricky, especially for effects heavy low budget films, but they feel like ten years back- low rent CGI was just becoming the norm, etc.- not nowadays.

 

The plot has some obvious gaps that are a bit difficult to overlook- least important of them all, is that Molly is Ali’s stepmom. Unless I missed a bit of dialogue on my two watches of this movie, it isn’t until approximately thirty minutes in that we discover that. The obviously strained relationship between the two during the aforementioned breakfast scene would have made much more sense if this was known sooner.

 

In an effort to save everyone at the campus cafe’s lives, Molly yells that Nick has a gun. This works, but then a security officer comes up and immediately slams Nick into a wall. This officer was not in the cafe, and no one was yelling, screaming, or pointing that it was Nick that had the gun. So the question remains, how did the officer know that it was allegedly Nick?

 

After that first quake, Molly calls Hank and Ali. She tries to convince Ali to leave her concierge job to flee to safety. Ali states that a lady from CalTech is on the news right now, saying everything is going to be okay. Two scenes later, we are treated to a news segment introducing us to the start of the press conference. Wait, what? The conference has already started! Using her smarts, Molly calls CalTech and speaks to (). He refers to the whole thing about 2008, and Molly tells him that it was only because the technology and code weren’t up to par; code he wrote! The phone call then ends, and he takes exactly no accountability for his part in the (apparently) massive blunder that was predicting earthquakes in 2008. How in the world is that possible? He must know that he is partially to blame for it, so how can he throw that back in her face? What a fucking douchebag!

 

There is a plane that crashes into Hank’s refueling helicopter. It’s all one shot, with a simple pan over to watch the explosion from the two vehicles colliding. How the plane loses control and crashes is a complete mystery to me. A small plane takes off, as the plane that crashes is coming in for a landing, but as it appears on screen, they miss each other by just enough. So, yeah, awkward.

 

Finally, there is the part where Ali, her coworkers, and some guests at the hotel she works at just miss the last bus to a safe evacuation point. Them missing the bus isn’t a huge deal, but there are still soldiers present at the hotel, both of whom are part of the evacuation efforts. Are there no plans to get these guys out? They make mention of going to a bomb shelter, but that seems dumber than a door- if a plan, any plan, was worked out, why would it be the one that puts these people underneath the ground? You know, the place that is literally breaking and falling apart; let's get them closer to the ground, that is a good idea (hint: no, no it is not).

 

If the movie has so many issues, how come you stated that the movie is able to stand out (implying it is good, to some degree)? Excellent question hypothetical reader! It took me a while to really figure out why I had such a fun time with it, until I happened to watch “Magma: Volcanic Disaster” the day before I sat down to write this review. A perfectly decent film in its own right, “Magma” hits all the cliches of the genre, exactly when you’d expect it to. And that’s when it dawned on me, while there are some disaster movie cliches sprinkled throughout, by and large “San Andreas Quake” either outright avoids, or manages to subvert, most of them. This will be a bit more spoiler heavy than usual, but nothing too major will be revealed-

 

Mentioned above, is when Molly calls up CalTech to inform them that they are wrong. After just a little bit of convincing, the big asshat does look at her data (he and his team). Once they realize she’s correct, they start a massive evacuation (Evac Level 4; which I am fairly certain isn’t a real thing). Dickweed doesn’t try to take credit for getting the information early, or steal the ideas/ design for her work, etc. It was very refreshing to see characters in some form of authority far more interested in actually helping the public than petty squabbling with colleagues.

 

While the driving force of the movie is the traditional rescue scenario, it is not the macho dad (he isn’t that macho) that needs to prove he loves his kid by rescuing him/ her. It is the stepmom, and student Nick that must go rescue Ali. It is a small reversal, but it is different enough to feel original. Nor is there a bit about either parent (step included) working too much and never seeing their family. I bloody hate this trope, and am very pleased that writer/ director John Baumgartner’s script avoids it entirely.

 

We do meet a few stranded people on the side of the road, and all of them are fairly reasonable, and actually need help-with saving a family member, getting a car started, etc. No roving bands of asshole punks or anything. Yes, there is one mom/ daughter team that steals Molly’s car, but they were honestly hoping for help, and things just got out of hand. There is one scumbag character (aside from penis head, already discussed), a guest at the hotel, but there is no scene where one of the more likable characters needs to be saved so he sacrifices himself, or some such. Early on, after getting caught in a elevator for a brief period of time, it only takes a few pleading lines for him to help out the elderly gentleman that forgot his medication.

 

When all of those unique story elements get combined with the behind-the-scenes goodness, it makes for a lot of fun. Castles may start off as annoyingly cheerful, but the more dire the situation gets, the less merry she is, the better she gets. Jason Woods, as Nick, is quite the surprise here. From the get go, even if I found his dialogue unrealistic, he quickly sold me on his being serious about school, maybe a little too smartmouthed for his own good, and the type of goodhearted guy that would stop to help, even when time is of the essence. He and Castles play off each other well, and their push-pull relationship seems authentic. Woods’ chemistry with Van Dien is also quite good, despite them only having six to eight minutes of screentime together at the end of the movie.

 

Grace Van Dien is proving herself to be quite the skilled, young performer. Her dislike of, and catty attitude towards, her stepmom is pulled off with ease in just a few lines of dialogue. That snarky side, which is a million times removed from her excellent portrayal in “Sleeping Beauty”, sounds natural and is fun. Lance Townsend exudes an easygoing charm, and the love he has for his family is believable. The rest of the cast is just fine.

 

Directorally speaking, Baumgartner doesn’t get too stylish, but he does provide a sense of urgency and keeps things moving along nicely. There is one really awesome shot where Nick’s van jumps over a cracking portion of road, just before a massive quake hits, that looks up from the road, almost like a street POV shot, that adds a nice flourish to the proceedings. Director of photography Ben Demaree lends the movie a polished look, with lots of scenes having an impressive amount of destruction and carnage packed into them- a shot of a massive rockslide, during Hank’s tour is quite excellent, and the sequences involving the escaped zoo animals…

 

… allow me to explain that- one of the earthquakes breaks down a good number of the exhibit walls, so Molly and Nick accidentally slam into a baby hippopotamus. Mama hippo ain’t happy about this, so she charges Molly (who stepped out of the car to see what happened). Nick gets the angry animal’s attention so she bashes into the sides of the car, thus allowing Molly time to jump into the car and they escape. After the hippo has given up the chase, they stop and assess the damage. Then just walking across the street is a family of giraffes. The shot composition shows us just the bodies and upper legs of the animals, framed through the windshield, and it perfectly showcases how much one can get out of a single shot with some inventiveness.

 

When the quakes hit, it is the classic shake the camera around and have your actors fling themselves about the set. It is competently done here, and when combined with the solid and quick editing, courtesy of Ana Florit, and the mostly good CGI, it all makes for a believable disaster. Joseph Lawson once again does the visual effects, and aside from some debris from a few collapsing buildings appearing very lightweight and blocky, they are good, especially the hippos. On the making of featurette, there is a string of scenes compared without and with the special effects, and there are effects all over. This flick has lots of subtle ones to keep the devastating look up, and it is impressive that they pulled it off as seamlessly as they have here.

Chris Cano’s score punctuates the action nicely, with a bit of strings during a save from a windowsill being quite excellent. The stunt team must have been running around like crazy, as there isn’t five minutes that go by, after the first act, without something falling, crushing, near missing, or smashing into, near, on, by, etc., our leads. A car stunt on a bridge just before it collapses is really impressive and fun.

 

This movie has plotholes, iffy acting, and one character so awful it is shocking to find out he isn’t the devil himself! But it is also a movie that has a hippo attack. Was it completely necessary? No, but it was awesome! That sense of fun, along with the originality and solid chops on display make for an enjoyable ride overall.