BSFN 11 - Mega Fault

Bad Science Film Night 11 is the straight-to-DVD / TV movie classic - MEGAFAULT. Made by the studio that brought us the legendary bad science film, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, and starring Brittany Murphy, Benton from ER and the nasty man from X2, it had all the making of a classic bad science film....

The story starts with Benton from ER doing some detonating related to mining, but for some reason the explosions start a terrible chain reaction and there is a lot of terrible shaking. Benton from ER, who is called Boomer (ha! because he makes things go BOOM!) has enough time to jump into his car and drive away along a road - but the crack chases him! And keeps chasing him! Oh no!

We then cut to an important meeting of scientists in Washington DC, where seismologist, Dr. Amy Lane (Brittany Murphy) is receiving an award, apparently for being the only seismologist in the whole of the US. She, her husband and five year old daughter were certainly the only people at the meeting of important science people who knew to shelter under a sturdy table in the event of an earthquake. As Dr. Amy is the only scientist who might possibly be able to study this earthquake, she gets helicoptered off to the site of the earthquake, where she rescues Boomer from a hole in the ground and just escapes more earthquake related damage. 

More catastrophic disaster stuff happens, including all the planes in the air being unable to safely fly (and guess who is on a plane when this happens - Dr. Amy's family!!). The earthquake continues to travel across America, like a propagating crack (which is not really how earthquakes are likely to work), and many people are injured. Boomer has to blow up a portaloo, so Dr. Amy can steal a helicopter to save her family, blah blah blah.  But fortunately Dr. Amy then ends up in some underground military base, with control over a secret piece of military hardware.....

Look, look! It's a tectonic weapon!!! (images taken from the Asylum's MegaFault mini site) 

This tectonic weapon was a "phase beam" that made the lithosphere very cold, at which point it reacted with the molten mantle (ARG!!!!!!) and caused an earthquake.... We were excited by the use of proper words like lithosphere but that was really overwhelmed by anger relating to the "molten mantle". 

Fortunately the tectonic weapon should allow the military people to stop the earthquake, or at least divert it, because if the earthquake reaches the west coast it will be an extinction event! Naturally these things don't go to plan, and this means Yellowstone is going to be a super volcano. People around Yellowstone then burst into flames because the ground is so hot, but they don't notice it's warm until they spontaneously combust....

But it's OK - if Boomer blows some things up, or more specifically blows the same thing up on a loop for nearly ten minutes, then Wyoming will be like the Grand Canyon, a place with magical earthquake/crack stopping powers. By this point we just had to bow to the majesty of the relentless bad science. 

Bad Science Film Night 11 - MEGAFAULT

• Favourite Tagline: A crack in the world has started... we have 24 hours to stop it.
• Premise: Irresponsible miners trigger a crack/earthquake, which propagates across the US, causing havoc and threatening the whole world!
• Worst piece of science: The molten mantle!!!! Dude!!!! As a deep Earth seismologist with a particular interest in the mantle this majorly irritates me! The mantle as a whole is not molten, it's is just melty in a few places, and it melts at ridges due to decompression melting!!!!!!!! ARG!!!!!! I suppose the "phase beam" is really bad science too, and the inexplicable barrier nature of the Grand Canyon, but nobody will actually believe those bits of science. Remember, the mantle is a solid, that is why S-waves can travel through it. 
• Best DVD extra: The making of documentary that told us two exciting things; that to get a shot of the helicopter flying the film crew had to hang around a medical rescue heli-pad, and that this whole movie was filmed in 14 days.
• Unresolved questions: Was it Boomer blowing stuff up at the beginning that triggered the MASSIVE earthquake? Or were the bad military testing their tectonic weapon?
• Overall review: So much repeated footage! So few seismologists in the whole world! But the director clearly enjoyed making his film, and we enjoyed yelling at it every 5 minutes. Terrible movie in many ways, but a good bad science film.
• Total number of BSFNight-ites: 8, excellent turnout!