Snowmageddon (Blu-ray Review)
Snow at the holidays doesn’t always make for a cheery winter wonderland! On November 13th, Anchor Bay Entertainment released Snowmageddon on Blu-ray and DVD. This unforgettable doomsday film, which premiered on the Syfy Channel, imagines a deadly end of the world by evil snow globe scenario! Part thriller and part old-fashioned B-movie fun, Snowmageddon features a talented cast of cult fan favorites including David Cubitt (“Medium”), Magda Apanowicz (“Caprica”, “Kyle XY”, “Hellcats”), and Michael Hogan (“Battlestar Galactica”, Red Riding Hood). When the Miller family discovers a mysterious gift outside their home on Christmas Eve, they could never imagine it would contain the power to doom their idyllic mountain community. The gift contains a snow globe with a perfect reflection of their own town inside. When they shake it, snow even begins to fall – whatever happens inside the snow globe happens to their town for real. But when buttons on the snow globe unleash a series of terrible disasters on the town, the family must band together and find a way to destroy it, but will it be too late?
Film 
John Miller (David Cubitt) lives in a small town in Alaska with his wife Beth (Laura Harris) and their two children – Jennifer and Rudy. Beth is a helicopter pilot and Jennifer begs to accompany her as she flies Derrick Reed (Jeffrey Ballard), the famous snowboarder, out to a the mountain.
The night before a mysterious gift appear on the Miller’s doorstep. The gift is a snow-globe with a miniature version of their town inside. When the buttons on the snow-globe are disturbed a devastating event occurs both in the globe and in the real town. A crack in the earth takes the life of a resident of their town and the Miller’s start to realize the connection. The family dog won’t stop barking at the globe – adding to the idea that there is something unnatural going on.
When the globe causes flaming meteor showers, Beth’s helicopter crashes and Derrick Reed’s snowboarding partner is killed. John head’s up the mountain to check on his family and he finds them but they end up trapped in an avalanche. Unlikely hero Derrick Reed saves them and they head back to town. Rudy was left with a babysitter but has runaway when he realizes the events happening in town are his fault. As everyone searches for Rudy the townspeople are forced to endure more disasters including spikes exploding through the earth. The Miller family must convince the town that the events are related to the globe before more people are hurt. In the end, they realize they need to destroy the globe by throwing it into the old volcano near the town.
The viewer should not be expecting a movie named Snowmageddon to offer up much plausibility. It was never explained where the globe came from, why it was there, or who picked the Miller family to receive it. They vaguely mention and old legend that might be related but that is never fully explained either. You have to enjoy this movie as a disaster flick without wanting answers to questions like “why?”. Despite these limitations, the film overall was more entertaining than I expected, but then again I also enjoyed Mansquito and Sharktopus.
Video
Snowmaggedon is presented on Blu- ray with a wide-screen 1.78:1 ratio. The detail is pretty good, allowing you to see what’s going on inside the snow-globe. On the white snow powdered mountain, inside the Miller’s cabin, and in the day and night scenes in town the film is visually sufficient, but certainly not impressive. Skin tones are natural throughout and the black levels aren’t quite as dark and solid as I would like but they are acceptable.
Audio
Snowmageddon is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 sound with English SDH and Spanish Subtitles. As disaster flicks go, this one didn’t rock my living room at all. Dialogue is clear and intelligible and the audio levels were consistent so I did not need to adjust volume in between the action. The bass is delivered fairly well and there’s some nice ambiance as well. This isn’t one of the better mixes, but it it’s not too terrible either. It’s just your basic standard mix with no real frills to it.
Extras 
Sadly, there are no special features on the Blu-ray.
Summary
Snowmageddon was worth watching and will make a nice addition to the Christmas evil section of my DVD/Blu-Ray shelf. It’s one of those badly good Syfy movies with an appropriately bad tag-line “hell has frozen over”. The Blu-ray says the film comes from the producers of Ice Quake, Mega Cyclone, Stonehenge Apocalypse, and Mongolian Death Worm. I’m not ashamed to say I plan to watch every one of those with the latter being the most exciting titles that I’ve heard in a long time. Don’t expect much from Snowmaggedon, suspend all notions of reality and you might enjoy the holiday destruction.
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That had to be the longest senseless trailer I have watched since The Life of Pi.