E.M.P. 333 DAYS is not really a bad movie as such. It's just lackluster, features a un-intriguing plot and all but screams it's amateur, no-budget origins.
Like most such movies, it's plot and what little action there is is entirely tailored around its budgetary constraints. "Locations" are private homes and the occasional rural farm yard. The notion of societal collapse is depicted as us, the audience, looking at the "concerned" faces of a couple of characters as they look out a window whilst serenaded with the sound effects of societal-collapse-violence; never do we actually see anything of what is actually happening.
I did give E.M.P. 333 DAYS some extra points for the fact that it did not engage in that ultimate of low-budget movie sins: incessant, unnecessary, nausea-inducing close-ups. If a movie features an endless chain-gun barrage of close-ups of talking heads for no justifiable reason, you know it's an absolute crap movie. Thankfully, there was very little of that in E.M.P. 333 DAYS, so 3 stars added on for that alone.
There are no surprises in E.M.P. 333 DAYS. A young, teenage girl, Niamh, is sent by her father (who has decidedly survivalist tendencies) to live with her grandmother in a more rural setting as tensions with North Korea escalate. On cue, a high-altitude EMP-generating bomb is detonated practically overhead, and everything electronic grinds to a halt. The fact that many types of electronics and probably the the majority of today's vehicles would survive with little or no damage I suppose is something we are expected to overlook in the interests of poetic license.
Poor old grandma kicks the bucket after only a few post-apocalyptic days and Niamh is left to fend for herself, which, for most of the first half hour of the movie, simply consists of living off of whatever is in the house plus what dad thoughtfully stockpiled for just such an emergency. Oh, and having to drag stinky old grandma off somewhere where she can be increasingly odiferous in private.
Before long the obligatory local yokel hooligans come sniffing around for snacks and our heroin decides to beat feet in a quest for one of dad's cashed supply dumps.
Along the way, Nianh picks up a young teenage boy while dodging the undesirables. I'll stop here so I don't spoil the adventure of discovery for you.
Collectively I think you can count the entire cast on less than two hands.
There is one high-altitude bomb explosion special-effect which is unspectacular but good enough. Probably something that comes with Adobe After Effects.
Again, there is nothing actually WRONG with this movie. I suppose it's just that it's absolute poverty is SO extreme it makes watching the movie a little depressing. It's threadbare means pokes up through the veneer of willing-suspension-of-disbelief in odd ways and distract you from the story.
For example, there is (I think) a vintage SS Chevelle that appears in several scenes towards the end. Apparently somebody forgot to remove the license plate and this evidently created an issue because in every scene where the plate on the Chevelle is visible it's blurred to conceal the plate numbers. Exactly like you would see in a Craigslist ad. Appearing as it does in what is supposed to be a movie simply causes you to look for it every time the plate is in the picture. I stared more intently at the blurred plate images than I did ANY of the characters. For some reason I found it fascinating that they would actually do this and leave it in the picture. I bet they didn't notice the visible plates issue until postprocessing and there was no budget to shoot those scenes again. And probably everybody was already back at work at McDonald's.
Ho-hum.
E.M.P. 333 DAYS is what it is and it's not terrible. Really, it's not anything. It's just there. In two weeks you won't remember it at all. In a year it won't even qualify as a movie trivia question.
Meh.
Like most such movies, it's plot and what little action there is is entirely tailored around its budgetary constraints. "Locations" are private homes and the occasional rural farm yard. The notion of societal collapse is depicted as us, the audience, looking at the "concerned" faces of a couple of characters as they look out a window whilst serenaded with the sound effects of societal-collapse-violence; never do we actually see anything of what is actually happening.
I did give E.M.P. 333 DAYS some extra points for the fact that it did not engage in that ultimate of low-budget movie sins: incessant, unnecessary, nausea-inducing close-ups. If a movie features an endless chain-gun barrage of close-ups of talking heads for no justifiable reason, you know it's an absolute crap movie. Thankfully, there was very little of that in E.M.P. 333 DAYS, so 3 stars added on for that alone.
There are no surprises in E.M.P. 333 DAYS. A young, teenage girl, Niamh, is sent by her father (who has decidedly survivalist tendencies) to live with her grandmother in a more rural setting as tensions with North Korea escalate. On cue, a high-altitude EMP-generating bomb is detonated practically overhead, and everything electronic grinds to a halt. The fact that many types of electronics and probably the the majority of today's vehicles would survive with little or no damage I suppose is something we are expected to overlook in the interests of poetic license.
Poor old grandma kicks the bucket after only a few post-apocalyptic days and Niamh is left to fend for herself, which, for most of the first half hour of the movie, simply consists of living off of whatever is in the house plus what dad thoughtfully stockpiled for just such an emergency. Oh, and having to drag stinky old grandma off somewhere where she can be increasingly odiferous in private.
Before long the obligatory local yokel hooligans come sniffing around for snacks and our heroin decides to beat feet in a quest for one of dad's cashed supply dumps.
Along the way, Nianh picks up a young teenage boy while dodging the undesirables. I'll stop here so I don't spoil the adventure of discovery for you.
Collectively I think you can count the entire cast on less than two hands.
There is one high-altitude bomb explosion special-effect which is unspectacular but good enough. Probably something that comes with Adobe After Effects.
Again, there is nothing actually WRONG with this movie. I suppose it's just that it's absolute poverty is SO extreme it makes watching the movie a little depressing. It's threadbare means pokes up through the veneer of willing-suspension-of-disbelief in odd ways and distract you from the story.
For example, there is (I think) a vintage SS Chevelle that appears in several scenes towards the end. Apparently somebody forgot to remove the license plate and this evidently created an issue because in every scene where the plate on the Chevelle is visible it's blurred to conceal the plate numbers. Exactly like you would see in a Craigslist ad. Appearing as it does in what is supposed to be a movie simply causes you to look for it every time the plate is in the picture. I stared more intently at the blurred plate images than I did ANY of the characters. For some reason I found it fascinating that they would actually do this and leave it in the picture. I bet they didn't notice the visible plates issue until postprocessing and there was no budget to shoot those scenes again. And probably everybody was already back at work at McDonald's.
Ho-hum.
E.M.P. 333 DAYS is what it is and it's not terrible. Really, it's not anything. It's just there. In two weeks you won't remember it at all. In a year it won't even qualify as a movie trivia question.
Meh.