What in the actual frozen hell did I just watch?It's 2:47 AM and my brain feels like it's been flash-frozen and then thawed out in a microwave that doesn't spin. I just finished Apocalypse of Ice on Tubi (because of course it was on Tubi, where bad movies go to die and I go to resurrect them at 1 AM) and I'm sitting here wrapped in three blankets even though my apartment is perfectly warm. My toes are literally curled up like little scared caterpillars.
The movie starts with this scientist lady in a lab coat looking concerned at a screen. Red lines. Graphs. Something about "polar vortex destabilization." And I'm thinking, okay, standard disaster movie setup. But then BAM. Within five minutes, the entire northern hemisphere is covered in ice. Not gradually. Not over weeks. It's like God spilled his Slurpee on the globe. There's no build-up. No "oh no, the temperatures are dropping." Just suddenly it's -100 degrees Fahrenheit and people are freezing mid-stride like those statues at Pompeii.
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I physically recoiled when this guy gets out of his car to help someone and just... freezes. His face contorts in this silent scream and then turns blue-white in seconds. I literally jumped back on my couch and knocked over my glass of water which is now soaking into the carpet and I don't even care. That scene is burned into my retinas.
There's this one moment that's stuck in my head. The main characters are trapped in some government bunker and the scientist lady (who apparently knows everything about everything) explains that the only way to stop the "ice apocalypse" is to detonate a series of nuclear warheads in the atmosphere to "rebalance the thermal layers." She says this with a completely straight face while pointing at a map with red lines drawn on it with what looks like a Sharpie. The dialogue was so perfectly terrible it looped back around to being brilliant.
This reminds me of that time in fifth grade when I tried to build a "volcano" for the science fair. I spent all week on this paper mache monstrosness, painting it brown with red streaks for lava. When presentation day came, I mixed the baking soda and vinegar... and nothing happened. I'd used too much water or not enough vinegar or something. So I just started making explosion sounds with my mouth. "KA-BOOM! PSSSSSH!" The teacher gave me a C-. That's exactly how I felt watching Apocalypse of Ice – like someone was making explosion sounds with their mouth instead of actually showing us something impressive.
The CGI in this movie... I don't even have words. It's like they used a 2005 gaming engine and then rendered it on a potato. There's this scene where a tsunami of ice is heading toward New York City (because of course there is), and the ice waves are literally just shiny blue triangles moving in unison. I paused the movie and just stared at the screen. My cat jumped onto my lap and looked at me like, "You're still watching this?" and honestly, I didn't have a good answer.
But here's the thing – I couldn't look away. I was completely invested in these terrible, one-dimensional characters surviving the nonsensical ice apocalypse. There's the divorced dad trying to get to his daughter, the scientist who knows everything, the military guy who just wants to blow things up. It's like someone threw every disaster movie cliché into a blender and hit "frappe."
I thought I loved how bad it was. I was laughing, I was texting my friend screenshots of the terrible CGI, I was having a grand old time. But now that I'm typing this... was it actually kind of offensive? Like, did I just waste 90 minutes of my life that I'll never get back? I thought I was enjoying it ironically, but now I'm questioning my entire existence. Is this what rock bottom looks like? Watching terrible disaster movies on free streaming platforms at 3 AM?
The whole viewing experience was just... weird. I kept getting these Tubi ads that would randomly interrupt the movie at the most dramatic moments. Right as the ice tsunami was about to hit, BAM – ad for car insurance. Then back to the movie. It completely shattered any semblance of tension, which honestly might have made the movie better. The commercial breaks were like little lifelines back to reality before diving back into the frozen abyss.
And the science... oh god, the science. I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure that's not how any of this works. The ice is somehow selective – it freezes cars and buildings but somehow our heroes can run around in light jackets for hours. At one point, they start a fire with... I don't even know what. It looked like they just rubbed two sticks together in the middle of an ice-covered forest and POOF, campfire. My brain was actively rejecting what I was seeing.
You know what's really messing with me though? I think I'm going to watch the sequel. Yes, there's a sequel. It was advertised during the end credits. And I want to watch it. I need to know what happens after the nuclear warheads save the day. Does everyone just defrost like TV dinners? Is there an ice monster? Does the scientist lady get a Nobel Prize for her Sharpie map?
I'm a mess. I'm a disaster movie disaster. My couch is wet, my cat is judging me, and I'm seriously considering watching Apocalypse of Ice 2: Electric Boogaloo (or whatever it's actually called).
I need to go to bed. I need to thaw out my brain. But I think I'll leave the window open a crack. Just to make sure the ice apocalypse hasn't actually started.
3/10 - flop
- alex