Preview: The 12 Disasters of Christmas
The 12 Disasters of Christmas premiers Saturday December 8th at 9/8PM ET/CT on SyFy Channel.
An ancient prophecy about the end of the world comes true. The 12 Disasters of Christmas is based on quite possibly one of the most flimsy premises I’ve ever heard.
***** Minor Spoilers Ahead *****
This being December 2012 of course it deals with a Mayan prophecy about the end of the world, you see there are 12 disasters that lead up to the end of the world. The Mayans prevented it once with the use of 5 of the Mandarin’s power rings. They then created the song The 12 Days of Christmas as a warning so that no one would forget about the 12 disasters, and hid the 5 rings in the small mining town of Calvary, which appears to be in Canada. I’m not sure what the Mayans were doing that far north, or why they hid the rings, or come up with a song that has nothing to do with the disasters they were supposedly warning people about, or how they knew about Christmas.
That aside, 12 Disasters is a mediocre movie at best, the special effects are of the level that we have all come to expect from SyFy movies. Oddly whenever anyone dies from any of the disasters other than the Ice Spears, people shatter or disintegrate.
This is another one of SyFy’s movies where apparently everyone in the town that is affected are idiots. I have 2 prime examples. First off Kane (the guy building the Mega-Mart that is going to put all the town’s family businesses out of business) kills the Sheriff in front of the entire town. So, do the town’s folk do the sensible thing and handcuff or tie up this murderer? No they let him give them a speech and walk free to sacrifice one of the neighborhood teenagers. The second example is after Kane catches up with Joseph and JC, the aforementioned sacrificial teenager. JC is Joseph’s 18 year old daughter, who apparently is the Chosen One that must gather up the 5 rings. Kane has decided she has to be sacrificed to save the world, so he tracks them down and takes JC hostage at gun point. A struggle ensues and Kane is knocked unconscious. So, do Joseph and JC tie up Kane and take his gun? Nope, they just run off and leave his gun lying on the ground next to him.
I only counted 11 disasters in this movie, I’m not sure if that is supposed to imply they stopped it before the 12th and final disaster, or if the storyline itself was the 12th disaster. Unless they count the Steam Geysers as a separate disaster from the Volcano eruptions, but since they happen simultaneously, I count them as part of the same thing. It was interesting that both the Red Smoke and the Steam Geysers would disintegrate people, but not rocks or trees. During the whole Steam Geysers incident I was wondering where the R.O.U.S.’s were.
The family dog is the smartest one in the entire town. The dog disappears when everything starts happening, and doesn’t show back up until everything is over, completely unscathed.
Final Thoughts:
The 12 Disasters of Christmas is one of those movies that is great to sit around with a bunch of friends and make fun of, but other than that it has no intrinsic entertainment value. The actors did as good a job as they could with the script they were given.  The plot is flimsy at best, and the special effects are the cheap mediocre effects we have come to expect from a SyFy Saturday Movie. I give this movie 3 out of 10. If rated on a MST3K scale I would give it a solid 7 out of 10.
