Absolute Zero (2006)

With a catchphrase that will make you want to physically accost the screenwriter, this made-for-TV disaster flick revolves around the premise that the magnetic field of the earth can flip on a dime and that's what makes things cold. Prepare to roll your eyes directly out of your skull.

SHOULD I WATCH IT?
Yes. These 2000s disaster movies have a special place in my heart (and in hell). If you advanced beyond the 5th grade, such films cause you to suspect that you should be having cocktails with Stephen Hawking. You also start to feel not so bad about the times you've found yourself hating humanity. This can be a reassuring exercise. Normally I label myself a humanist, and spend a lot of time personally working to practice non-judgment... but once in a while it's nice to bathe in smug superiority. Disaster movies are the death-by-chocolate of mental desserts.

Another great one is the Asylum's 2012: Ice Age, which is actually the film I wanted to watch, but it was no longer available on Netflix. I'm trying to start the tradition of watching a bad snowstorm-themed movie when the first snow falls. It's a good excuse to snuggle up with cocoa, popcorn, and a tall boy of Milwaukee's Best from the convenience store. A true celebration of all things terrible.


PARTICIPATION

1. Take a drink every time someone says "science is never wrong".
2. Take a drink every time someone makes a global warming joke.
3. Brainstorm the implied layout of the Antarctica research base. Include the location of the Office Depot.
4. Post-film discussion. Who is more annoying: the computer genius character in Absolute Zero or the computer genius character in Jurassic Park? Explain.

THE SUMMARY
Jeff Fahey is a "scientist" who does research on magnetism and its effects on Making Stuff, Like, Really Cold. He has a big lab where he somehow brings it down to absolute zero in a controlled environment. Now, I don't know much about the details of temperatures that halt all molecular motion, but in the first five minutes, I had a feeling that maybe this wasn't going to be the most accurate depiction of science in a film ever. We're then aptly introduced to the... ugh... catchphrase:

Someone call Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is a Level 5 fallacy emergency.

See, science is wrong all the time. I don't mean from a creationist standpoint. I mean that the idea of science is to form ideas based on current evidence, then test that evidence with experimentation. Being wrong is part of science at its most fundamental level. If you're doing science right, you're open to the possibility that you made an error and need to re-form your hypothesis and test again to come closer to truth. And every time technology or statistics advance, we find new evidence that previously-held concepts might need further investigation and testing. SCIENCE IS WRONG ALL THE TIME. Lawnmower Man is talking about pseudoscience, which is never wrong in the case of delusional narcissists who hand-pick data to justify the values they know are wrong but are too scared to consciously challenge, because doing so would shake the foundations of their small and bitterly disappointing human existence, Dad.

...I mean... Jeff Fahey.

So, back to our main character. It's the classic trope of the guy who sees everything coming, and tries to warn people, and nobody listens. He's sent off to Antarctica as a distraction to investigate some general weirdness that's happening. There's a cute little rover with the words "ROVER" emblazoned upon it (note: it's a rover) that finds human remains in a cave. Upon one glimpse of the grainy footage, the scientists determine the frozen body is 10,000 years old. People in this movie are really good at pinpointing, to the day, things that happened tens of thousands of years ago. The end of the world can also be predicted (and is constantly shown to the audience) in the format of a countdown timer, to the second.

My favorite part about Antarctica is that the production crew was too cheap to grab more than the one valu-pak of soap flakes, so the "snow" is clearly a carpet with a thin dusting of stuff on top. You can constantly see the carpet bunching up under actors as they walk around.

It's like you're THERE, you guys.

All right, so after literally everyone else is killed in a freak storm, Jeff Fahey returns to Miami in the next scene. Don't ask questions. It just happened. We're also introduced to one of his colleagues and his wife (previously our hero's girlfriend), their daughter, and two college students who are trapped in the friendzone.

I will give credit where credit is due. Taylor Swift and Seth Rogen are not as irritating as they could have been here.

The rest of the film is, of course, everything getting really cold and our cast struggling to get to the lab where they will inexplicably be safe. We watch mom leave her 9 year-old daughter in a corridor, to face the end of the world alone, while she tries to rescue Corporate Asshole Guy in an elevator, despite the fact that he's totally trying to kill her. Parenting! Simultaneously we have to, of course, do some computer hacking to restore the power. There's also some absolute-zero-proof environmental suits that are in the building somehow. Obviously, you have to go outside for the big climax.

Did I mention that this is all because the magnetic field of the earth randomly flip-flopped?

Oh my God, Lawnmover Man has other people saying it now, too.

My frontal lobe is missing.

This has backfired. I was feeling so smart. Now I can't feel anything.

NO. IT'S NOT TRUE.