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| Black Hole, The [2006] - review by Brian |
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Director: Tibor Takács
Starring: Kristy Swanson Judd Nelson Heather Dawn
Country: USA
Despite what the title tells you, the emphasis is on an electrical monster, not an astronomical force of destruction. There IS a black hole, but somehow the impending implosion of planet Earth is less dangerous than ONE stupid monster that the authorities can’t contain.
The story starts out simple enough: a quantum research center has unveiled their ion collider and, despite protests of this very danger, a black hole has inadvertently been formed on Earth. If that weren’t enough, some kind of electrical monster has emerged from it frying any living thing it comes into contact with. Now I could go into detail about how this is idiotic because not even LIGHT can escape a black hole, but I’ll let the movie’s explanation suffice: “maybe it the creature exists on a level we can’t possibly understand.” Perfectly sound…but in the context of a movie, it’s also what I like to call “lazy writing.”
Judd Nelson plays a nerdy scientist (Eric), and while I think he played the part as well as he could, I have a hard time imagining him doing anything other than stealing people’s lunch money. In a particularly funny scene, he attempts to explain wormhole physics to a 60-something year old General. What you get is Eric basically ripping off the presentation given by Sam Neill’s character Dr. Weir in Event Horizon.
Eventually Eric comes to the brilliant conclusion that the electrical monster is somehow involved in a symbiotic relationship with the black hole. As the creature feeds off of more energy, the black hole grows exponentially. Again, the explanation is flimsy at best, but I suppose a movie about a black hole happening on Earth is equally absurd.
At any rate, after several attempts and failures to catch the beast, the black hole grows to noticeable proportions. Originally meant as a covert operation, it’s kind of hard for the world not to notice a swirling mass of matter being broken down to a molecular level. Making matters worse, Eric is on the clock: if he doesn’t find a way to stop the black hole, the military is going to drop a nuke on it. I’m not sure what brain trust decided the best course of action was nuking our own soil, but it’s a damn good thing we have Eric.
Somewhere in the film, they decided it was a good idea to shoehorn in a side story involving Eric’s ex-wife. I can only imagine this was done to endear the character to the viewer, but it just feels like an afterthought.
One of the biggest problems I have with the story is the concept of a “point of no return.” In the context of the film, that’s the distance where no matter how hard you try you are caught by the black hole’s pull. This point differs depending on the situation and scenario, apparently, as there are times where someone is no more than 5 feet away from it and able to run away. I realize that’s probably not a big deal, but it’s so obvious how much work people did to make the bullshit theory in this movie believable. If you’re going to spend hours trying to reinvent black hole physics, at least burn a few brain cells being consistent.
I know I’m being a little nitpicky with the observations. The idea of a black hole forming on Earth is both interesting and ambitious. Just in the context of the movie, I don’t feel it was executed to the best of its abilities. The movie isn't horrendous, but it certainly is flawed.
Tags: Monsters
Sci-fi
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