DAY OF RECKONING (2016)

When it comes to quality filmmaking, the SyFy channel is not normally a production  company that you associate with films containing an iota of artistic merit.  

The home of Sharknado, and countless Shark ( gene spliced with some other animal) V's an even more stupid gene-spliced animal, you know hat you are getting into when you watch this sort of film.  And while they can never be accused of being high art, hell you need a lot of balls to even describe them a low art, they at least have a sense of fun.  Not so much popcorn films, more like "Christ I'm really drunk and find the remote to change the channel film.", you at least could watch them with a sort of post-ironic glee.  

Day of Reckoning  breaks the trend of these low budget, low brow films and attempts a more serious take on their unique brand of horror film.  What a huge pity that Day of Reckoning is such a complete and utter failure.  

Fifteen years after the world was nearly destroyed by a legion of demonic creatures, which spewed forth from the bowels of the earth, society is on the verge of getting back to normal.  Giant military installations guard the big holes from where the creatures escaped from to reek havoc.  

However, a lunar eclipse combined with someone putting a fork in the knife drawer, or some other totally nonsensical omen of misfortune, means that the demonic creatures are coming back, and this they are really pissed off, this time they want to finish us off for good.  

After watching this complete and waste of time film I kind of wish, the demonic army would knock on my door and rend me limb from limb, or at least hide my remote control to my TV so I never have to suffer through such a bad film ever again.  

Day of Reckoning goes for the serious tone and in doing so completely confuses drama and tension for cliche ridden overwrought dialogue and poorly executed action sequences.    Even for a SyFy special movie, the acting is abysmal.  All gruff speeches delivered with a halting stop-start rhythm that would even have William Shatner cringing with embarrassment, or your overplayed screeching woman getting all upset over the realisation that their career is probably over after appearing in this film.  

Dull storytelling, even duller lifeless direction and dialogue that should never be uttered on the screen again makes this a film that fails on every level.  The best way you can view this film is to watch it with a view to spotting the films that they have stitched together to make this moth-eaten flea ridden patchwork quilt of a film.  

Christ on a bike they have have a reworking of the famous Quint speech from Jaws.  Except this version has none of the gravitas of the original. 

One dimensional characters that have been pulled out the stock character cupboard and forced to dance for our entertainment lend nothing to the film.  With zero character development or originality, you will sit there and hope that they all die a horrible death very quickly.  

Of course, we can't review this film without mentioning the special effects.  Remember that scene in Jason in the Argonauts, where he fights stop motion skeletons?  That scene still, even after over forty years this scene still has the power to amaze.  Well it seems the makers of Day of Reckoning took this style of animation as the basis for all of the special effects of the film, the only problem is compared to the Jason film the special effects in this one look embarrassingly bad, and I mean bad, even for the SyFy channel.  

Day of Reckoning is without a doubt a SyFy channel film; it is just a pity that it throws away everything that normally lends these films some degree of watchability and leaves the viewer with a film that surely must be one of the nine circles of hell itself.