The Vortex (2012)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Blistering performances.

A wormhole opens up in Afghanistan and a team of US soldiers of vague ethnicities is sent to deal with it and also find the mad scientist responsible. They encounter huge creatures which have been enlarged by crystals coming out of the wormhole. (I think...) A scientist called William Marx is drafted to help as he knew the mad scientist. Also in the team is Catherine Deckert who is Marx's ex-wife. (What are the odds of them getting together again?) Not an original plot and not an original film. In fact a very poor one with no tension or excitement, comic moments that fall flat on their face and a badly constructed script, not to mention the laughable CGI monsters.The characters are all irritating. Jack Plotnick as Marx tries to be amusing but fails and Ted Jonas as Lt. Steven Raiger shouts most of his dialogue for some unknown reason. It's a terrible bit of acting that would disgrace a primary school performance. All throughout there are lines of dialogue that don't make sense and the characters act in a way no real person would. The music score by Johnny Wilson is the only worthwhile element in the film. Apart from, of course, the hilarious talking snakes.

Sydney Gerber (Camden Toy), a very mad old scientist, opens a wormhole somewhere in Afghanistan, so giant scorpions can come out and kill all of his team. Dr William Marx (Jack Plotnick), a slightly mad young scientist, is sent with a team of soldiers to find Gerber and close the wormhole. Lieutenant Raiger (Ted Jonas) is determined to finish this mission soonest, because he and Marx are in love with the same woman. However, fighting various monsters and human enemies becomes an almost impossible mission that drags on and on.'The Vortex - Beasts From Beyond' is an incredible movie. If you didn't see it, you wouldn't believe people release something like this. There is a giant plastic hornet and 2 talking (!) snakes. Probably becoming aware of how ridiculous everything would look, the makers added a lot of comedy by the relationship of Marx and Raiger who hate each other from the first moment, but have to continue working together on this mission. A few dialogs of these two characters are the only enjoyable thing in an otherwise horrifying flick.

I laughed. I cried. I watched from behind the sofa with my mouth open. I was stunned.Don't get me wrong, any amazement I felt at this movie was incredulity at the sheer amateurish antics of everyone involved with the making of this... this... I want to say film, but can't. A film has some sort of structure - a plot, acting, cinematics. But this ... thing... doesn't have anything.I've seen better, deeper, better filmed and more thoughtful movies in the epic fails section on YouTube. This was made by a group of less talented members of a high school film club, scripted by one of their primary school siblings using an encyclopedia of clichés, and using clothes store mannequins so as not to pay real actors. Well, that is what it looks like, and I am probably doing down the film club here.The acting is of the densest mahogany, the script is (very old) cheese from the very first word, the graphics are laughably bad attempts from the 1970's, the music hand-recorded from inside an elevator, the lighting performed with flashlights. And the director can only aspire to the greatness of Ed Wood, astonishingly making even the atrociously bad Uwe Boll look like an auteur in comparison.The worst fifteen minutes of my life! And they brought it out in 3D as well! Amazing!

Now this is a sci fi channel movie so you know its going to be fairly cheap and shoddy from the outset. Usually these films have a vaguely recognizable actor or actress in the title role (usually someone from Stargate or Stargate Atlantis) but this film hasn't. The plot for what its worth has a renegade Army scientist opening up a wormhole in a cave that causes insects to grow to a huge size. A team of Seals and a couple of Scientists are sent to plug this vortex before it swallows the world.Now these films can be entertaining but this is at the lower end of the spectrum for these creature features.Interesting to note that as spiders get bigger there skin becomes bulletproof to the point where a team of a dozen people can empty assault rifles into it without hurting it but a man with a knife can easily dispatch it. Also because the are bigger their brains are bigger so they become smarter (we know this true because of all the dinosaur astrophysicists).To sum up its pretty bad, the special effects are weak even by sci fi channel standards and the pacing is dire. The finale is quite entertaining in a ludicrous way. Overall, I'd recommend you avoid this unless you are one of those people who get a kick out of watching bad movies.