User reviews

The scientist and novelist John McAdams (Angus Macfadyen) is summoned to an emergency meeting of scientists at the Preston Point Institute to discuss a tsunami that has hit the Southern New Jersey Shore. Eight years ago, John created man-made tidal waves with his Sea Lion Project; during the experiments, his beloved wife Ann had died and he quit working as scientist. Now the scientists discuss the possibility of a terrorist attack. When John returns home, he finds that someone has planted a file in his computer with classified information to incriminate him since he had written a sci-fi novel about terrorists using tidal waves to destroy the USA.

When a second tsunami reaches the Maine, John becomes the prime suspect and is chased by the FBI and the police. Meanwhile he investigates the events with his former colleague and friend Sophie Marleau (Karine Vanasse) and when he follows the money, he discloses a huge conspiracy with economical interests of the Camtrell Corporation to construct the Sea Wall defense system to protect the American coast.

"Killer Wave" is a TV Mini-Series with a reasonable story that could have been better and better with minor improvements. The writers were lazy and the direction was loose. (1) John McAdams is a non-charismatic character and the fat Angus Macfadyen gives the sensation that is bored and without any motivation to act. Therefore Angus Macfadyen is miscast. (2) Stanley Schiff, performed by Christopher Heyerdahl, seems to be a moron but never a scientist with his behavior. This character should have been better developed. (3) The two FBI agents seem to be independent agents and never report their findings to a chief. (4) The pace is too slow and emotionless. Edgar's speech, for example, is too long and dull. (5) In the final sequence, there are at least three mercenaries protecting Edgar Powell and Aslan Bulkari that shoot the two FBI agents that escape using the elevator. Pretty after, Sophie runs through the corridors and there are no killers anymore that vanish. (6) There are very few characters for a conspiracy of that size probably due to budget restraint. (7) The story is predictable and the conclusion is very disappointing. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Maremoto" ("Tidal Wave")

"Killer Wave" is a TV Mini-Series movie divided into two parts which are equally bad. To tell the truth when you start to see a movie like this you do not have many expectations of this. Personally, I have to tell you that I saw this movie yesterday on TV and it was really a waste of my time, but I knew from the beginning of this that it will be.

In my opinion "Killer Wave" is a simple movie with not any plot or anything that a person could be interested of. Αs the film title says, regards a deadly wave which destroys and kills everyone and everything in its path.

Do not waste your time for this movie, it's not worth it...

This is a very slow movie, i can not understand that some people give this movie a 10... ??? I think those people never saw a movie before.

It's a lot of talking and no action. Even Angus Macfadyen is loosing his grip and can not save the movie for going down the hill. I've seen other movies with Angus, like BraveHeart, in that movie he was acting sublime. The most actors where performing worse and they could not amuse me.

Also the special effects, where cheap, can anyone remember Dr. Who ? The special effects in that series were better. In the first part, when they go up to the wave in a boat, nice trying but bad steeling from the movie "A Perfect Storm".

The second part, give me a break... i took it "i fell a sleep".

Don't spent your precious time on it, do something good with it !!!

Killer Wave did seem sort of interesting at hindsight, with the idea to have man making tidal waves as a terrorist weapon, but when I did sit down to watch it it was spoilt completely by bad execution. The scenery is good, but the photography has a dull look to it and the effects looked cheesy and would look more at home in films and TV series of the 60s. Killer Wave is furthered hampered by endless continuity problems especially in the scene where Jim's house is destroyed by the tidal wave, including noticeable and distracting changes in position of the wave, and scientific inaccuracies with words you could tell they didn't know the meaning of it. That's not all though. The dialogue is rambling and stilted, the main villain's speech about his humble taking-over could and should have been edited down to three or so sentences and there is nothing interesting in the story or characters. Granted the concept was great, but the pace was pedestrian not helped by scenes that dragged on forever, the whole McAdams framing plotting was far too obvious and I have seen the innocent-guy-holding-the-gun trick countless times before and a million times better. In terms of the characters, none of them engaged me in any way, they are little more than bland stereotypes that you don't care anything for in the end. It seems ironic really because by the end of the first part despite the overkill character padding by the time any character is given any attention you just don't care. The acting is awful, Angus McFadyen is such a promising actor but this story and character is simply beneath him and judging by his phoned-in performance here I got the sense he knew that. Overall, as interesting the idea was, the execution made Killer Wave a waste of time. 1/10 Bethany Cox

...this may have the worst science. (And that takes some doing!) Nothing in here makes sense, but I'd be willing to watch it anyway, despite the one-dimensional characters and non-science, but it falls apart even taken on its own terms. I'll pick out various problems, in no particular order:

There are deadly dull moments, far too many of them for the genre. Nobody coordinated accents, so while it seems it might be taking place in Canada most times (it's not supposed to be, but the news reporter they keep flashing to in cliché shots is clearly Canadian), every accent was different than every other one. Hire a dialog coach! You know a "thriller" movie has lost you when you start thinking "Why am I watching Tom Skerritt peel a tangerine, and why can't he peel faster?" And some of the cuts and angles on faces are very weird--did they think that would disguise that we were watching five minutes of talking heads? Why did the hero wander through a crowd of policemen holding his photo just to say "hi" to a neighbor and immediately leave? Am I supposed to think that's drama? And what were the goofy villains' goals? Never did catch that.

I fell asleep at minute 160 or so, and I have no desire to go back and catch the last 15.

There are so many movies of this ilk out there often played daily on the Scyfy channel. Some form of disaster, terrible cgi and a group of actors on the downswing of their careers.

This two part mini-series is essentially just an extended one of the aforementioned movies and stands at 3hrs.

It follows a scientist investigating a shady conspiracy regarding bizarre tsunamis that are behaving unusually and against nature.

The plot is actually not bad even if not entirely original, it plods along at a competent pace and is marginally saved by a very good cast who are simply too good for this kind of project.

For what it is it's not actually bad, but with the exception of the finale don't except any surprises.

The Good:

Strong cast

The Bad:

Speedboat over the tsunami, sorry but really!?

The usual poor cgi

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Tsunamis are bad?! Sorry I really have noting for this one

Killer Wave opens with a huge wave coming at some kids on the beach while they scream and run. Then the film gets a boring start for 10 minutes with not one comedic line or interesting piece of material. Then it gets good. From there it kept me interested the whole way through. So a male and female scientists whose names escapes me is on the run from two nosy FBI agents, terrorists, violent she males and GIANT waves badly created with terrible CGI effects.

And this is not a kids movie no matter what it may seem. There's a part where a guy kills his wife then himself. And there's a graphic kill scene of a woman.

"Killer Wave" was shown in Two-2hr time slots, so I recorded these so I could watch them together. I find that most TV movies of this length lose any rhythm when watched on multiple nights and, of course, broken by commercials. With that condition, I enjoyed it. I found the story interesting and the production good. It would be a movie that most family members could watch, although younger viewers are often wanting the special effects and impact of 'big-budget' movies.

Parts of the movies are predictable, but I found those occasions something to smile at since I recognized the idea before they happened. I was disappointed that the few fight scenes came off poorly -- this plot doesn't need a lot of them, and the didn't overdue them -- just not the quality we expect these days.

Overall, good for a TV movie. Worth watching, but I probably would not watch it a second time.

If you can put aside the dodgy CGI and some poor acting from the B rated actors who are all gunning for an Oscar, then this film isn't bad.

Great story with a well-believable conspiracy theory that you could belief in real life and that is it's strength.

Two parts to the mini-series which is worth a watch.