Day 11: DO NOT OPEN 'TIL… EVER!

Anyone remember when President Obama coined this phrase last winter?
Yeah, so I'm blaming him for this movie.

Continuing on with the 24 days of Christmas films and all, but it's time for a confession. I cheated again yesterday. Shhh, don't tell Hallmark Channel, let's keep this between us, they don't need to know. I can trust you to be cool, right? Don't be looking at me like that. You think I like sneaking around to other channels? Well I don't! Just that sometimes Hallmark can't give me all that I need, some thing's they're not willing to do for a brother. Those are the times I gotta go out looking for a little strange. And strange is what I got when the Syfy Channel gave me Snowmageddon. And for the record (as if anyone's keeping one) this one counts as a holiday movie because it takes place two days before Christmas and there's decorations and trees and stuff. Plus, Syfy Channel aired this as part of their Countdown to Christmas event, so there.

On paper this Syfy original stinker was billed as the story of a mystical snow globe that causes catastrophic weather disasters when shaken, so you know I just had to get me some of that! That sounds like the basic cable equivalent of your uncle showing up for Thanksgiving dinner with weed. No not that uncle, not the creepy one who used to hide under your bed and scare you at night. The other uncle, the cool one, your mom's brother, used to buy you booze and smuggle you into R-rated movies when you were 15. Yeah, he's out now, got paroled, good behavior.

Also, Michael Hogan was in this thing. Dude was Colonel Tigh on the Battlestar Galactica reboot so, that gave the flick a pedigree, and I miss that crotchety old bastard. Of course the BSG pedigree didn't work out so well for me with Mistletoe Over Manhattan (shudder). You'd think I'd have learned from that mistake but I'm not really much for learning things. I figure you keep trying to put the square peg in the round hole and then one of these days it's just gonna fit, law of averages and whatnot. May not make sense to anyone who knows a damn thing about math, but hey, I got a square peg, a round hole and nothing but time. So shut up and let me live my life, Mother!

So um… yeah, how about we talk about that movie now?

Starts out when a mysterious stranger leaves a gift on the doorstep of the Millers, a nuclear family from the little mountainside town of Normal, Alaska. (Name like that, town's just begging to be effed with.) The box gets opened and guess what, it's the aforementioned snow globe. Not just any snow globe though, not some piece of crap you pick up as a last minute present at the airport gift shop. BTW, not a real smart way to say "Happy Anniversary Honey". Trust me on that one. This globe was handmade and ornate with a tiny yet exact replica of the town of Normal inside. That night, within the globe a crack opens up on the replica of main street while simultaneously a tremor a in town causes a life-sized version to open up on the real main street. Ohhhh… ominous.

Next day a lot of crazy shit happens all thanks to the demon globe and all centered on the tiny town. There's big exploding ice meteors, showers of ice missiles, an avalanche, giant ice spikes erupting from the ground and a volcano. (Because when you think snow disasters you think of volcanoes, right?) Would have been awesome if all that stuff happened at once or if any of it could have happened for a substantial period of time. But instead the events are all spaced out and each lasts about a minute. (Way to spread out that effects budget Syfy!) Most of the movie is spent watching the townsfolk digging out from each disaster. As one would expect, several deaths occur and the real tragedy is how little these people give a damn. The town's resident "special person" gets blown up in a bus and no one sheds a tear. A snow boarder loses his best friend in the avalanche, then mourns the loss for about as long as it takes me to finish typing this… yeah, he's already moved on by now. The Miller's son goes missing at one point, the babysitter goes to look for him she winds up on the business end of an ice spike. When the boy turns up in town, Mom and Dad are of course super relieved, yet no one takes a moment to ask what happened to the babysitter, currently doing time as a frozen kabob. Saves them from having to pay the bitch I guess. $20 an hour, outrageous.

For me the biggest laugh comes at the point where everyone in town throws their collective hands up and says to hell with Normal and decide to bail. The mass exodus consists of everyone piling into five cars and driving away. Five cars, that's it! The whole population of the town couldn't stage a decent tailgate yet some mysterious force has gone through the trouble of creating a mystical WMD to wipe them out when the same effect could have been achieved with a semi-automatic and half an ammo clip.

Won't reveal the ending because it's just stupid. And this is coming from the guy who enjoyed the Syfy original movie Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. I think that may be the problem right there, Syfy set the bar too damn high for themselves with that one and there's nowhere for them to go but down. Debbie Gibson and Tiffany together on the small screen, giant mutant snakes and gators, Mickey Dolenz of Monkees fame was there for all of about two minutes before he got eaten. And icing on the schlock-cake? Gibson and Tiffany in an 80s pop queen cat fight! How the hell's a killer snow globe gonna even come close to that for entertainment value? Can I take it from your silence that you agree with me? Yeah, you know what I'm sayin'.

This one left a bad taste in my soul, serves me right for straying again. My own fault, I'm weak. Why do you people even put up with me?