Crew
Director/Photography – Michael Su, Screenplay – Marc Gottlieb, Producer – David Michael Latt, Music – Mikel Shane Prather & Eliza Swenson, Visual Effects Supervisor – Glenn Campbell, Makeup Effects – Vincent Guastini, Production Design – Cristobal Hernandez. Production Company – The Asylum.
Cast
Jhey Castles (Lieutenant-Colonel Madolyn [spelt Madoylyn on credits] Webb), Lindsey Marie Wilson (Dr Quinn Ramsey), Michael Paré (Thomas Ramsey), Philip Botello (Aaron Farmer), Sarah Lieving (Gretchen Willis), Anthony Jensen (Adam Forster), Gerald Webb (Jerry Ford), Paul Logan (Officer Greg Stern), Mike Gaglio (Actor), Joseph Michael Harris (Corporal McKee), David Thomas Newman (Private First Class Sharp), G. Anthony Joseph (Voy), Michelle Ng (Aza), Natalie Daniels (Ryr), Presley Alexander (Young Maddie), Gianna Yeager (Young Quinn), Willow Hale (Grandma)
Plot
The year 2031. Dr Quinn Ramsey, the head of an observatory in Houston, is witness as a freak asteroid strikes the International Space Station. At the same time, her sister Madolyn, the commander of the U.S.S. Colossus, has her ship sunken by a giant crocodile. Everywhere all of a sudden, Earth comes under attack by giant sharks, snakes, octopi and Transformer robots. In trying to fight these off, the sisters and the military realise that they are dealing with an alien invasion where the aliens have brought to life the creatures that appear in the movies produced by The Asylum.
The Asylum is a low-budget production company that has been active since the early 2000s where they have put out a prolific output of films, ranging from their Mockbusters – films made with titles that resemble high-profile theatrical releases – along with a body of disaster and monster movies, in particular killer shark films with their ongoing Mega Shark and Multi-Headed Shark series and the B-movie hit of Sharknado (2013) and sequels.
Three of four years ago, I was on The Asylum’s Facebook feed when they put out a general question along the lines of “what idea should we make next?” My suggestion was that they try something like the MCU and bringing all their resident menaces together into a shared universe, pitting the sharknados against the mega sharks, multi-headed sharks and so on. Their response was “We’re already onto it.” I waited and waited and it appears to be that 2025 Armageddon was the result.
However, what we end up with is a silly idea – aliens have been watching a tv channel of The Asylum’s movies and create copies (3D printer versions we are told) of their menaces as part of an
The main problem with 2025 Armageddon is that it lacks the sense of its own ridiculousness that make some of The Asylum’s better films. It is a film that calls out for a tongue-in-cheek playing of something like the Sharknado films and the better Mega Shark films. However, director Michael Su has none of the sense of humour that Sharknado director Anthony C. Ferrante or screenwriter Joe Roche have and is just making a regular monster/disaster movie. With the right touch some of the in-jokey lines could have zinged but instead this just proceed prosaically.
In recent years The Asylum’s in-house visual effects team have been majorly improving their game to the point that some of the material they are putting out can easily compare with big-budget studio work. That is not the case here. The visual effects here are occasionally ropey and uneven and not up to the general quality they have been putting out in the 2020s.
You also cannot also help but note that the title 2025 Armageddon is inaccurate. The opening prologue with the two sisters as young girls is set in 2006 but then the title notes that we have jumped forward twenty-five years, which should correctly make the date upon which events are transpiring the year 2031 not 2025.
Michael Su is a Taiwanese emigre to the US who has been working as a cinematographer on numerous low-budget films since the early 2000s. As director, Su has also made The Revolting Dead (2003), Doomed (2007), My Demon Within (2017), Numbers (2022), Tommy Knockers (2022), Bridge of the Doomed (2022), Bloodthirst (2023) and, also for The Asylum, Transmorphers: Mech Beasts (2023), Snow White and the Seven Samurai (2024) and The Twisters (2024).
Trailer here
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