COMPANY: The Asylum
RUNTIME: 86 mins
FORMAT: Netflix
PLOT: When a colossal tectonic shift causes the sea level to start rising, a microbiologist gathers the DNA of as many species as she can, while the military creates an "ark" in a desperate attempt to preserve life on Earth.
REVIEW: 40 Days And Nights is flat-out one of Asylums weakest efforts of the entire year, tied with probably Super Cyclone. It very much feels more like a movie they would have put out in 2010, and if that was this case I probably would have been much more lenient on this as it would have come from an era where their movies weren't much better then this, but this year has been filled with plenty of exceptional Asylum movies that have had above-average effects, acting, and production values, so taking all of that into account this is just a huge step back in all of those departments (with the exception of the Brittany Murphy look-alike Monica Kenna, who always brings her A-game and is a joy to watch). Even the editing is quite sloppy and disjointed here.
However the one good thing about it is that the script itself is the lone saving grace. It's actually a really good story, filled with likable characters, caught in tension-filled situations, and padded with some really good and entertaining individual scenes and moments. If you can look past everything else, at least the story itself is serviceable - this is a prime example of a movie sounding way better on-paper then it does in practice.
As it stands, overall this feels very much like a 2009/2010-era Asylum movie and not a 2012 one. It would have been excellent for that era, but the bar has been raised much higher over the course of 2011 and 2012 that this just doesn't cut it anymore because I know that the folks at Asylum are capable of much better now. Between this and Super Cyclone coming out almost back-to-back, it does not paint a pretty picture for Asylum's final quarter of 2012, which is a shame since the rest of this year has seen some amazing stuff by them.
3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward