Independence Daysaster (2013) Directed by W.D. Hogan

Weird thing about this movie is that it never becomes a great one but it yet never becomes a terribly bad one either.

It's easy to make fun of this movie because of its concept, title and budget but in all honesty, I was pretty entertained by all of it, though I of course won't claim it's anything that's remotely original or great.

You can say that within its genre this is simply a good movie to watch. It doesn't feature an overly complicated script with any strongly developed characters and it isn't terribly clever or original with any of its ideas either but it still does a good job handling all of the genre aspects, making this a perfectly watchable low budget flick, or B-movie if you will.

Despite its obviously low budget, the action and science-fictions aspects are still the best parts about this movie. Maybe it's because director W.D. Hogan has a history as a storyboard artist and therefore has a better understanding and feeling of how to time and frame certain things better than lets say the average director of his caliber.


Still the lack of budget was all too apparent and it's one of the things that's preventing this movie from ever turning into a great one. It's something that keeps on bothering me but just don't make a movie that's heavy on science-fiction and action if you clearly don't have the budget for it. It barely uses any practical effects and mostly relies on the use of CGI, which however is far from the top of the line. It's all terribly fake looking and it definitely took me out of the movie at times.

I would say; give director W.D. Hogan a bigger budget and better script next time and I'm pretty sure he'll be capable of delivering a movie that's significantly better than this one, as well as the average other genre attempt.

A still perfectly watchable movie, for what it is.

6/10

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