Cringe: ⭐⭐
Enjoyment: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
An Alaskan town is in danger of destruction by a mystical snow globe that appears on a family’s doorstep, wrapped like a Christmas gift, and causes deadly “natural” disasters in their own town, while simultaneously occurring in the snow globe.
Introduction#
Snowmageddon is a 2011 made-for-tv action adventure, directed by Sheldon Wilson and made for the SyFy channel. Surprisingly, it is not from our friends at The Asylum, who have produced many other gems for SyFy, so I had no idea how good or bad it might be going in. The cast and crew are composed of people I don’t know, but look vaguely familiar on camera, with a single nucleur family taking most of the screentime. The family is composed Laura Harris as Beth (mother), David Cubitt as John (father), Magda Apanowicz as Stephanie (daughter), and Dylan Matzke as Rudy (son).
From the synopsis above, it’s pretty clear what Snowmageddon is about: It’s a family-friendly disaster movie with a sci-fi/fantasy twist. The Miller family lives in a very nice little town near a mountain, and it’s Christmas time. For some reason a magical snow globe shows up and wreaks havoc, and the family must fight for their lives. Pretty standard fare, but I thought I’d give this one a shot as I have soft spot for disaster type films.
Plot#
Snowmageddon opens with a nice family scene around Christmas time, where everyone is together wrapping gifts in the evening. A mysterious wrapped gift shows up on their doorstep, and they of course open it. It turns out to be a very fancy looking snow-globe which has a small, perfect replica of their town and the nearby mountain in it. It’s also got a bunch of gears and clockwork stuff around it. No one really seems put off by this expensive, surprise gift, and move on after looking at it a bit. Except for Rudy, who takes a liking to it. This is when things start to go awry. The town experiences an earthquake which splits the ground apart in the middle of town, leaving a chasm and causing a bunch of damage.
Flash forward to the next day, and we find out the Beth is a helicopter pilot, giving rides up the mountain for daring skiers and snowboarders. It just so happens that a very famous young man is going up that day, someone Stephanie has a crush on. She convinces Beth to let her ride along so she can flirt with him. As a result of this, we’re treated with some aerial shots of the mountain and surrounding landscape.
Meanwhile, Rudy is left at home with a babysitter, while John, who is evidently a cop, goes into town and does cop stuff. This sets the stage nicely, as we now have the mother and daughter up the mountain and separated, and the son has time to place with the snow globe, which he does. And when he does, all hell breaks loose, with plenty of earthquakes, fireballs, snowfall, and so forth. The rest of the film follows the family and several other residents of the town as they work to discover what’s causing the disasters and how to solve them.
Review#
At first glance, Snowmageddon looks like a dumb Christmas-themed movie, but it’s really kind of genius. You’re lured into it with bad expectations, but the film is a really solid and entertaining action adventure. It hits all the standard tropes you might expect, but does it well. The action sequences are thrilling, helped along by better than average special effects, given the time. The acting is mostly decent and the writing is good, with characters mostly taking believable actions given the situation. Snowmageddon is honestly better than most Hollywood disaster films I’ve seen, impressive for a made-for-tv Christmas movie.
While researching this review, I looked up the production company, Cinatel Films, and discovered they put out a lot of similar stuff to The Asylum. Some of the films I’ve already seen, but there’s a whole bunch of new ones I’ve never heard of, which I’m eager to check out. Here’s hoping at least a few of them will be as surprisingly good as Snowmageddon.
Cringe 2/5: Some of the characters are kind of dumb, and there are minor continuity issues. Overall, if you can accept the premise, not very cringey at all.
Enjoyment 4/5: I really this one, and it surprised with me how coherant and well-produced it was. Some of the action scenes had me on the edge of my seat.
Recommended Audience: Family movie night during the holidays.