Continental Split

Continental Split

Asylum’s new film Continental Split explores a theme that has the potential to divide the nation. No, not the upcoming election but the large fault line that stretches through the Midwestern region and is about to cause the largest earthquake in history.

Sadly, it starts on the wrong foot by showing how a government geologist by the name of Quintin Mims (A North Hollywood Story, Christmas Down Under) who is investigating the formation of a new lake gets into a heated exchange with a fisherman around it. The problem aside from the uninspired and clichéd exchanges between both men is the fact that the lake is three months old but for some reason, the dock appears to be several decades old.

I guess it really isn’t all that relevant as a tremor quickly causes the lake and the dock to sink into a large sinkhole. It also does so in the town of New Madrid which nearly consumes Eric (Crew Morrow, The Bold and the Beautiful) and Brenda (Roxanne G.C. Brooks, Road to the Well, The Snow is Always Whiter).

In another scene, Dr. Cami Weddle, Eric’s mother who is portrayed by actress Jessica Morris tries to control Eric’s sister from arguing with her. Emily Weddle, played by actress Allison Gold, is contacted about moving in with her father Alan portrayed by Chris Bruno since he has more chances of getting her a good paying job.

This can hardly be a surprise to anyone who is familiar with the whole horror scene. The Asylum’s movies are like the extreme mash up in the presence of The Continental Split. Just like in the above scenario, it seems, it is hard to make a move without doing algebra. So Cami and Alan broke up because she is an environmentalist and he operates fracking plants, which happen to be the ones behind the latest tremors. Do they have the even slightest hope of resolving their issues and in doing so, be capable of saving both the continent and their marriage? I think we all know the answer to that.

Unfortunately, most of it gets lost in an avalanche of pseudo scientific notions as well as the need for a daytime soap style feeble triangle involving Cami, Allen, and Cami’s friend turned lover, Finn (Canyon Prince, Timecop The Berlin Decision, Fortress) who has recently proposed to her. And as if that wasn’t enough, we are presented with a cartoonish evil Earthquake specialist who could be taken straight out of Twister whose evil plan is to obliterate a warhead on the fault line, which is guaranteed to end the earthquakes.

The director Nick Lyon (On Fire, Christmas in Vienna) and the screenwriters Gil Luna (Population 2 the Director’s Cut, Attack on Titan) and Joe Roche (Attack of the Meth Gator, Alien Conquest) however do not deprive the viewer of the requisite number of quake scenes one has come to expect of such films, but they are indeed very diverse. The sequence depicting a lake getting engulfed by a sinkhole is impressive.

But after a quake rather conveniently comes as characters plead to the governor to take quick measures, cars driving slowly past the CGI devastation does not evoke anything but laughter. A subsequent shot of floodwaters rushing to the shore of an unnamed city seems to be no better.

By the time Continental Split winds up with the emotionally charged, Hallmark Channel marriage which it seems to be aiming for, I nearly wished the film split me in two as well. There was possibilities of a good film hiding in the script, but it is never executed. Most of the dramatic situations, and there are many, are resolved in the banalest and simplistic fashion. Deft filmmaking is complemented by basic geographical fact errors as the image of a map of the fault zone is shown to be one of California and you have one more disaster which is more about drama than anything else.

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