What exactly are we to make of this Casper Van Diem Vehicle, ‘Meltdown:  Days of Destruction’?  I’m not really sure.  It seems to be the kind of movie that pops up on the Sci-Fi network as one of their ‘exclusives’ but this is a DTV release instead.  I’m just curious because it’s not a very good movie, but truth be told, I’ve seen way worse too.  Ultimately, ‘Meltdown’ is a middle of the road disaster picture that probably isn’t worth your time.

Somewhere in some city a team of scientist are performing an experiment.  This experiment involves detonating a 10 megaton nuclear warhead on an asteroid that is hurtling through space.  Mind you, this warhead isn’t coming towards the earth or anything, but apparently it just seems if these scientists need something to do and dropping nukes on asteroids qualifies as something to do in this movie.  Nathan (Vincent Gale) knows something is amiss and begs his supervisor to call off the test, of course he refuses, the nuke hits the asteroid, splitting in three pieces with the biggest chunk of it hurtling straight towards earth. Yeah, that’s pretty stupid.  Fortunately though, the asteroid narrowly misses the earth, merely grazing the atmosphere, which makes us happy.  For a little while.  Seems the asteroid knocked the earth of its axis moving it closer to the sun.  Of course, I’m thinking for something to actually knock the earth of its axis, it would have to hit the big rock pretty damned hard.  Overall, the science ‘Meltdown’ is suspect at best.

Van Diem is Officer Tom who is observing society going completely out of control as the temps get higher and higher.  In one of the better good lookin’ outs, Tom is dating

Scientist Nathan’s sister Carly (Steffy Von Pfetten) and he’s charted a plane to take them to Antarctica which will be the only climate on earth that people will be able to survive in. The remaining part of the traveling crew is Tom’s ex girl-friend Bonnie (Venus Terzo) their extremely irritating seventeen year old daughter Kimberly (Amanda Crew) and her thugged out boyfriend C.J. (Ryan McDonald).  In just a weeks time, folks have already turned into cannibalizing zombies, and it’s looking like our gang ain’t gonna make it to the airport, but they are soon helped by the suspicious Mick (Greg Anderson) who you know ain’t up to no damn good!  Sure enough he ain’t, and if the cannibalizing heat damaged zombies weren’t enough now we have this crap to deal with.

‘Meltdown’ wasn’t so bad, but it was missing something.  I would like to tell you what the director could have done, but I can’t address that dude because apparently he doesn’t want his name associated with this film.  Which is a shame, because there are way worse movies out there than this one.  What ‘Meltdown’ seems to be missing is a sense of ambiance and environment.  There is a lack of sound and music that you find in most films which obviously helps create tension, and that was lacking in this one.  The sets were sterile and some of the film seemed unfinished.  For instance, when our heroes were allegedly sitting in a traffic jam, we get external, obviously canned shots of some jammed freeway, but inside the car, there is no car noise, the windows are blued out as if some traffic shots were going to be added later, and it actually looked as if they were sitting in a stationary car on some kind of sound stage.

The suspension of belief required to buy into the story requires a grand canyon sized leap of faith.  You must believe that while the country bakes at 120 Fahrenheit, and food is scarce, that a nice cool frozen food locker would be remarkably avoided by the crazed public.  You must believe that while the freeways are packed, the side streets are remarkably empty.  Mostly you have to believe that a meteor could knock the earth of its axis. 

If you can buy this, then you might be able to buy into ‘Meltdown: Days of Destruction’.  Otherwise, you might want to avoid this little thriller directed by… well, some dude.