Homage to Fromage: Snowmageddon
It’s been a while since I’ve done an Homage to Fromage piece. To be honest with you, I’ve tried. I really have. But the last few Saturday night original movies on SyFy were painful and I couldn’t make it through them. That all changed this past weekend though. SyFy stepped it up just in time for Christmas with Snowmageddon.
I remember reading about this movie back in the spring when the scheduled was released. I read the synopsis and knew I had to check this one out. I would have missed it too if hadn’t been for Roomie’s keen eyes while channel surfing the other night. So, what was it about you ask? Let me sum it up for you.
The night before Christmas Eve, Rudy (Dylan Matzke) is home with his mom Beth (Laura Harris) and his sister Stephanie (Magda Apanowicz) when a mysterious Christmas present is left on their doorstep. Once his father, John (David Cubitt) gets home, Rudy opens the package, thinking it’s a gift for their family. They find a expertly crafted snow globe that contains and exact replica of their quaint Alaskan town. After Rudy twists the knob on the bottom, nothing seems to happen. However, the town has an earthquake that causes streets to cracks and gas lines to rupture. Rudy notices later that the same thing happened inside the snow globe.
The next morning the family goes about their business. John goes into town to help with the damage from the earthquake (what his actual job is, I have no clue) and Beth prepares to board her helicopter to drop off two snow boarders at the top of a mountain before heading to another town to drop of Christmas presents. Stephanie begs and pleads her mom to let her tag along because she wants to oogle over this snow boarding guy. Beth relents and the two head off to the helicopter. Rudy tries to tell John about the snow globe, but John leaves for work (whatever that is) and leaves Rudy with the baby sitter.
Fast forward to later in the day and things go from strange to down right bizarre. Another twist of a knob on the snow globe releases a storm cloud directly in Beth’s flight path. Once she sees it, she heads back home, but not before the cloud unleashes what I can only describe as ice bombs. Actually, it was like the Jericho missile from Iron Man but with ice. A big ice Jericho missile. Anyway, this goes on for what seems like….forever and of course, Beth’s helicopter crashes. The two snow boarders are alive but one of them is injured. While they try to make their way down the mountain, Beth and Stephanie try to do the same.
Meanwhile, John is in town and once he realizes that Beth’s chopper went down, he grabs the keys to the snow cat to go looking for her. Because there isn’t like, a mountain range between her and the town. Anyway, Rudy knows that the globe is bringing bad juju to the town and tries to tell the babysitter about it. She blows him off , but the dog knows. Dogs always know.
John is actually able to find Beth and Stephanie but just when they pile into the snow cat and head back, an avalanche happens, burying them inside the vehicle. The two snow boarders are caught up in the avalanche as well and one of them doesn’t make it. I assume he died anyway because I didn’t see him again. It’s ok though because the professional guy that Steph wanted to meet survived. And to top it off…he saved John, Beth and Stephanie. This must be a really small mountain. They make it back to the road to John’s truck to head back into town.
Rudy feels like all this destruction is his fault so he does what any sane child would do. He runs away. The baby sitter freaks out and goes after him only to come across John and Co and they’re headed back. She tells them about Rudy so everyone splits up to look for him. Never a good idea. Stephanie and snow boarder guy head to Rudy’s little fort, John and Beth head into town and the baby sitter heads back into the woods. Her time is limited.
Rudy shows up at the local antique shop, owned by a character’s whose name I can’t remember, but he’s played by Michael Hogan (Col. Tigh from Battlestar Galactica) asking if he made it. Of course he didn’t. Rudy tells the guy his theory which the guy believes. Soon almost everyone is on board with this ridiculous theory and the mission becomes about saving the town.
There’s some references to Pandora’s Box blah blah blah, and it’s Rudy who tells everyone how to destroy it. Just like his dragon board game where you have to throw a crown in a volcano, the same must be done with the snow globe. Oh yeah…the mountain….it’s an inactive-until-just-now volcano. So John heads out to cast the snow globe back into the fiery chasm from whence it came. Actually we don’t know where it came from. The movie never even tells us who delivered it to their doorstep or why. It’s all very Lord of the Rings and I kind of wish he had gone full Gollum with cradling the snow globe while whispering and giggling frantically “my precioussssssss”. But he’s a good guy, so he does what needed to be done and tossed it into the lava. Once that’s been done, the town breathes a deep, collective sigh of relief and all exclaim how it’s a Christmas miracle!
First of all, what I find miraculous is the fact that out of everyone who handled that snow globe, nobody shook it. How can you resist? It’s just not possible. Secondly, I find it pretty miraculous that John found Beth and Stephanie, and the snow boarding guy found John, Beth and Stephanie…..not to mention the fact that they survived a myriad of certain death situations.
A) Helicopter crash
B) Avalanche
C) Burial
D) Exposure (because who traverses a snowy mountain in jeans??)
E) Jericho ice missiles
F) Crazy rocky spikes shooting out of the ground
Also….for a movie called Snowmageddon, there wasn’t a whole lot of snow going on. And I really find it hard to believe that an Alaskan town doesn’t have snow on Christmas. I’m throwing the bullshit flag down on that one right there. A more proper title would have been SnowGLOBEmageddon since it was all the globe’s fault.
The visual effects were wretched, the acting just as bad and it really just seemed like this movie was based on an idea that was never fully realized. Like someone just said “Hey, let’s make a movie about a cursed snow globe” and some one else said “Hell yeah!”. It’s like the pitch was made by two stoners, who then found snacks and forgot what they were talking about.
Was it the worst one I’ve watched? No…not if you count those I couldn’t even finish because they were so bad, but it was pretty shoddy. Next up is Earth’s Final Hours. That should be interesting. I hope to get through it and post on it next week.
Tags: David Cubitt, Dylan Matzke, Laura Harris, Magda Apanowicz, Michael Hogan, Snowmageddon, SyFy
