Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

One of the reasons I’m fond of Straight to DVD movies is that these movies have the potential to be something called ‘Evergreen Product’. That means that even if the product is years old, it can still be fresh to a large number of viewers. The product… not the content of that product. Take this movie ‘Termination Point’ from our friends at Cinetel. I’ve never even heard of this movie, much less seen it, so despite the fact it’s four years old, it is brand new to me. Are ‘Spiderman 3’, ‘I am Legend’ and ‘Juno’, three big time theatrically released movies also put out in 2007 still fresh? Hell no, they were old and stale two months after they were released. But ‘Termination Point’? It’s a fresh product. Not the content… can’t stress that enough… but the product.

A couple of teenagers are making out in a barn when a plane crashes. They decide to investigate and find a partially burned boarding pass. The thing is that this plane took off tomorrow, but crashed today? What the hell? Teenagers are subsequently zapped by wicked lightning and sucked up into a hole in the sky.

Let’s go to yesterday where hardcore SCT super agent Caleb Smith (Jason Priestly), his wife Claire (Stefanie Von Pfetten) and their teenage daughter Sarah (Ashley Whillens) are on a much needed vacation to Mexico. Then Caleb’s phone rings, his wife knows that means trouble, he answers and he’s off the phone and off the plane because there is a national emergency. There’s a scientist by the name of Daniel Winter (Lou Diamond Phillips) and he’s stolen this top secret device he’s developed called… damn, I forget. But it’s the first known working teleporter. What Caleb doesn’t know is that Winter is on the plane that he just got off of.

Winter stole this thing because he feared the government was going to turn it into a weapon. Duh. Caleb figures out where Winter is, on the plane with his family, Caleb’s boss is forced to mobilize some fighter jets due to the danger of this device and on the order of the President, that would be G.W, not Obama since it’s 2007 and all, they shoot that plane out of the sky. Or did they?

Before the rockets hit, Winter activated his device and sent the plane into the dimension between teleporting from here to there called null space. Caleb, crushed because he thought his family was dead, is now told there’s a chance they could be alive but they can only be saved if the second teleporter controller is found. This quest is made more complicated by the fact that there is a mole inside the agency who is on murderous path to obtaining the device for themselves, plus this mole has planted a couple of evil undercover agents on the plane.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s an increasing black hole mass in the sky that the plane was supposed to exit but can’t, zapping up everything in its path. Worst still is that the calculations back at home base have determined that this thing will continue to grow to the point it will suck up everything. I don’t mean just Los Angeles, I don’t mean just the Planet Earth, but the Entire Universe! That’s called Termination Point baby, and that’s bad news. Thus it’s up to one small but tough super agent to make an unplanned trip into null space to save our collective asses and set things right.

So I actually enjoyed this movie ‘Termination Point’ as I would have to say it was kind of a fun ride with some genuine thriller type tension generated by director Jason Bourque, all layered with a slightly wacky sci-fi slant. Jason Priestly was in fine form as our action hero, kicking a little ass, engaging in the occasional ‘you shoot at me, I shoot at you’ gun fight, driving away from terrible CGI lightning strikes like Richard Petty and showing a little emotion when necessary. Another thing that probably helped make this movie more entertaining than it had any right to be was that there were four separate locations going on at the same time. We had Caleb on his quest, the passengers in null space under duress from evil hijackers and the black hole, the control center back on Earth Proper trying to fix the problem and the remote field unit which is housing someone who has to be our mole mucking stuff up. Again, Bourque straddled these four different locations pretty good which helped keep the action moving.

Now here’s what you don’t want to do… I tried… but it was unavoidable for me. Don’t think about it. The suspect special effects and the TV movie gloss were easy enough to deal with, but when I started to think about stuff, say like the timeline, then my head started hurting. Just don’t do it.

Like the plane crash. How could it have crashed and still be in null space? Is it an alternate reality thing? And the dates? It took off yesterday, crashed today, they find it tomorrow… I don’t know. The doctor, who is a passive wimp, steals this device from a top secret facility? How did that happen? The bad guy puts his agents on the plane… did he know the doctor was going to steal this device? If he knew that he could’ve just took it from him. The plane is full, the device is activated, but only the people close to the device make it into null space because it’s not strong enough to zap the people in the front of the plane but it can zap and entire 747? And even though the doctor’s intentions were honorable, his device will still be used as weapon and eventually another black hole will be opened and Termination Point will be set in motion one more time, only this time there won’t be a safe 747 in the void to zap into to fix stuff. Right back where we started.

All I’m saying is don’t do that. Just roll with ‘Termination Point’ and you will be all good.