Within the Rock (1996)

Expected more

Absolutely Fantastic

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

A huge asteroid is on it's way to smash the Earth, so a team of scientists and drillers is sent there to dig into the rock and blow it up from the inside. While digging they find a chamber with some sort of alien fossil inside. Of course eventually this fossil becomes alive and starts to maul the crew one by one.This movie is basically a fusion of Alien and Armageddon (although not as good as either film, not even close).It's an okay movie in the genre, although I will admit seeing it at a young age left an impression on me. The creature looks decent enough. Sadly there's nothing really redeeming about this movie. All the aspects are just.. generic. I think that's the best word to describe this movie. It has a few good scenes, but in the end it just doesn't wow you.If you're a fan of movies like these, go ahead and watch it. Just don't expect a masterpiece.My rating is 6/10

Apparently some people are not used to made for TV movies. Possibly too young- they were everywhere in the late 60's and into the 70's. They do not have a huge F/X budget like Star Wars, Close Encounters of the 3'rd Kind, or Superman, etc. However, Within the Rock is way above the Sci-Fi 'B' movies of the 50's and 60's. As to the plot, NASA and quite a few world governments are concerned about the possibility of a 'rogue' celestial body impacting our planet. A few years back, an object passed within something like less than a million miles of Earth- on a galactic scale, this is approximately next door. And, let's not forget the extinction level event that occurred 65 million years ago, that left iridium layers that are bigger than any other found on this planet ,and coincidentally occurred when dinosaurs became extinct.The actors by and large were fine- sci-fi is not Shakespeare. If I wanted to watch Shakespeare, that's what I would be watching.I liked this movie and recommended it to my sister.

I can't judge this film using normal reviewing techniques, because it's not a big budget, Armageddon type film that will comepletely blow you away. What it is is a mildley entertaining, fun-for-anyone-after-a-completely-undemanding-film-sort-of movie. Given millions of dollars and time, this would have been a spectacular, if completely un-original, dim-bulb film. But it's not. It was probably filmed over a month or less, for about a million dollars. For that, it's pretty damn good! It had a good script, with only one scene of bad dialogue towards the end (just think the worst, oldest cliche). Just goes to show that all you need is one talented person to start a film (I mean this films Writer/Director, who obviously knew what he was doing) and you'll end up with something respectable. 6/10 or ***/*****

The film is not very impressive. The meteor heading for earth looks like a meatball being thrown around in slow motion, the alien isn't very scary looking, and character development leaves something to be desired. Overall I'd give it a C.